Bill Gates reveals why he prefers Android over iOS

[Starscream07]

Bill Gates only has an iPhone because he has found his need for attention is fulfilled by it with Clubhouse? That makes sense.

Honestly why do we still care what this guy thinks about technology? He hasn’t been at the forefront of technology in almost 20 years. After Windows XP and Xbox, Microsoft had some of its worst years under his leadership.

He hasn't been on the forefront of computer tech but certainly in the energy sector.

 

[candle_86]

Microsoft screwed up Zune.
Apple knocked iPod Touch out of the park.
Microsoft had every chance to build an "Xbox Portable/ Phone" just like SONY did with the Xperia Play.
Microsoft did NOTHING.
Sony did a half assed job.
Apple just put gaming on iPod Touch.

If you want 3rd party development, you need to give them something worth developing on.
Zune wasn't it.
And Microsoft never game them a worthwhile platform.

Zine was miles ahead of ipod, ipod was popular because they made themselves look cool, but anyone that cared about quality bought a one, hell ipod had similar audio quality to the $20 mp3 players sold at gas stations. No Microsoft's only screw up was on marketing, but hardware wise zine made ipod look like a Fisher Price toy.

 

[triffid]

Well even going back to the iPod days, the DACs and amps used in the iPhones and iPods were always meh. People who care about audio quality were not using a iPhone in the first place.

Bluetooth is convenience and sounds great. Were all listening to compressed music anyways. I stopped doing everything in FLAC and now pretty much only use Spotify. Why? Because in reality the difference is so small.

Depends on what equipment you are listening on. Bluetooth is ideal for Spotify as at best it is around 25% of the quality of CD. You won't see the frequency range listed on Bluetooth equipment as it is appalling

Well even going back to the iPod days, the DACs and amps used in the iPhones and iPods were always meh. People who care about audio quality were not using a iPhone in the first place.

Bluetooth is convenience and sounds great. Were all listening to compressed music anyways. I stopped doing everything in FLAC and now pretty much only use Spotify. Why? Because in reality the difference is so small.

Depends what you are listening to it on. If you are using decent wired headphones or the old-style earphones like Sony Fontopias ( that have a wide frequency response of say at least 10hz- 24Khz) then it is easy to hear the difference. I do not rate those in-ear plugs that have tiny drivers and block out all outside noise. If you are using Bluetooth ear/head-phones then yes stick with Spotify (at least it is better than DAB)
The best Spotify quality (premium - 320bps is less than a quarter of the bit-rate of CD 1411bps! Basic tier Spotify is 160bps (about a ninth of a CD)
My advice to anyone reading this is to compare a CD on a music system through wired headphones to Spotify and you will hear the difference.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Zine was miles ahead of ipod, ipod was popular because they made themselves look cool, but anyone that cared about quality bought a one, hell ipod had similar audio quality to the $20 mp3 players sold at gas stations. No Microsoft's only screw up was on marketing, but hardware wise zine made ipod look like a Fisher Price toy.

Your memory is flawed.

Zune was ahead of iPOD.

iPOD Touch completely blew Zune, and every single other MP3 player out of the water, once and for all.

 

[p51d007]

Where MS missed the boat, was MARKETING. Jobs, for better or worse, could be a new
"I can see ice cream to a Eskimo, in the middle of a snow storm" kind of a guy.
Granted, his software is pretty stable, doesn't suffer as many "hits" from virus type programs,
but, his market share in the OS isn't enough to make it worth their while so to speak.
His SMART idea, was to give-a-way Macs to thousands of schools for a reduced price
or free. Kids grew up using a Mac, wanted one for birthdays, graduation etc. Those kids
now adults introduce their kids to the Mac ecosystem. I don't own one, but, from what I
understand, their ecosystem is pretty good from the standpoint that pretty much anything you
do on one, is automatically duplicated, per se, on all of your devices.
I've played around with the OS on a VM...it's just a piece of software to me, but, their marketing
in Apple's early days, was genius.

 

[terzaerian]

A huge anti-endorsement for Android, RIP

 

[waclark]

All Gates had to do was make a x86 phone and they'd have taken the market, except they tried the locked down Windows RT approach and obviously failed.

I don't agree. An x86 phone would have terrible battery life. And it would be a big fat, hand heater. The best thing Gates could have done was find someone to make his hardware and put a decent and Win compatible OS on it. Instead MS tried and failed multiple times in the phone space. They don't understand mobile computing, or didn't back in those days.

Contrary to what Gates said, it's wasn't a "natural" thing for Microsoft to win.

 

[candle_86]

Your memory is flawed.

Zune was ahead of iPOD.

iPOD Touch completely blew Zune, and every single other MP3 player out of the water, once and for all.

No, ipod touch was equally as garbage, they where popular because they where an accessory not because they sounded great

 

[kiwigraeme]

Where MS missed the boat, was MARKETING. Jobs, for better or worse, could be a new
"I can see ice cream to a Eskimo, in the middle of a snow storm" kind of a guy.
Granted, his software is pretty stable, doesn't suffer as many "hits" from virus type programs,
but, his market share in the OS isn't enough to make it worth their while so to speak.
His SMART idea, was to give-a-way Macs to thousands of schools for a reduced price
or free. Kids grew up using a Mac, wanted one for birthdays, graduation etc. Those kids
now adults introduce their kids to the Mac ecosystem. I don't own one, but, from what I
understand, their ecosystem is pretty good from the standpoint that pretty much anything you
do on one, is automatically duplicated, per se, on all of your devices.
I've played around with the OS on a VM...it's just a piece of software to me, but, their marketing
in Apple's early days, was genius.

Marketing yes - but without the iphone - Apple might just be a bit player or even bankrupt - MACs were becoming niche for media production- Ipods sold well - but no price premium near end over Creative etc .
Where Microsoft went wrong was Apps - like Betamax vs VHS - most people raved about their microsoft phones - but Android and Apple had the Apps - In hindsight M/S should have spend 10 Billion on getting all best Apps into it's store .
Still I don't think it's over - with the advent of super powerful processors coming - M/S could take over - "Love your PC, then you are going to Love your Phone " - PC means microsoft ( Apple and Linux can cry all they want )
It's such an obvious strategy - XBOX pass - play it on your Xbox, your PC , on your Phone ( which could be an Android, Apple - but will just work better on the MS Go phone )
The MS Go phone - powerful in itself - use the MS cloud or your own PC for that extra boost

 

[wiyosaya]

Is he not able to install MS software himself?

Probably not.

 

[wiyosaya]

He hasn't been on the forefront of computer tech but certainly in the energy sector.

By producing his own natural gas - lots of it?

 

[wiyosaya]

Knowing Gates reputation for dishonesty and business underhandedness I simply would not put much stock in anything he says. Having great wealth doesn't replace personal character and his is highly suspect, at best.

Like with Elon Musk, people somehow equate making lots of money to a broad expertise in life, the universe, and everything. It reminds me of the old EF Hutton commercials - "When E. F. Hutton Talks, people listen."

I really like how Gates had a contest a few years back to develop an affordable sewage treatment facility for the people of India. People in his contest came up with a plant that required millions of dollars in upfront investment in the plant along with who knows how much for the infrastructure to pipe the sewage from the populace to the plant. All I could think was "This is India, a composting toilet would be far more appropriate." Then a few years later, Gates apparently was educated on the existence of composting toilets - as he started promoting the composting toilet instead.

 

[hahahanoobs]

And guess which Kernel had ARM support and many other platforms since very early on?

See this is the other side of the proprietary vs open source argument right here: Open source is just not as effective at monopolizing markets so Microsoft probably wouldn't have made Gates a billionaire like his proprietary stuff did.

However, Microsoft could had been better prepared to quickly adapt to newer paradigms like ARM and mobile devices or modern day distributed computing schemes. Because guess what? Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft is back at being a very profitable cloud service company and a huge part of that is that they use Linux, the thing Gates and Balmer were so adamant about killing.

The lesson here is that proprietary software stifles technological progress and only gives us terrible oligarchies that greatly entrench on consumer rights like Microsoft did.

Yet what is Gates doing now? Well killing the possibility of a free vaccine for Covid-19 by making sure the researchers for one of the vaccines didn't go "free to all" and instead went with his Astra-Zeneca proprietary vaccine to make sure nobody gets any ideas and completely eradicates a deadly disease effectively like we did with Polio.

Overall he continues to be a cancer on society by promoting endless capitalist greed, even to this day through his "Humanitarian work"

The push for open source over proprietary always makes me laugh. Thank you.

 

[hahahanoobs]

The Gates hate makes me laugh every time.
And witnessing the cherry picking of text and zero research never gets old either. Just skim through the article and run to the comments to make assumptions and baseless predictions, huh? For the lawls? All of it next to useless, but still very much entertaining to read. Thank you.

Also just as funny - open source doesn't drive competition. So not sure why people think it's the future. The free versions of Linux on the desktop only still exist because they are free. If they weren't they'd dissapear. If it surpassed Mac that would be progress, but now it's been surpassed by ChromeOS. Notice the obvious pattern? No one wants the free stuff because it doesn't get the same attention as products that have millions invested regularly. The successful versions of Linux cost money and people gladly pay it.

ChromeOS and Android are well ahead of the free stuff diehards try to convince you to use. You're like Jehovah's witnesses. Annoying. If the product is good, people don't need to convinced. Think.

You want cheap stuff that all have the same features. Then ask the open source community to get right on it, but where is the incentive to buy one over the other? There isn't one. For good reason. Think.

 

[PEnnn]

Apple doesn't look to have the best technology but the one that can potentially bring them the most profit. Changing to Bluetooth was the signal that they are prepared to sacrifice quality for convenience. BT uses a compressed music format and will never sound as good as wired. £200+ for the latest Apple phones shows that people are gullible. Bluetooth is not a progression - never was and never will be.

You do know that both Android and IPhone use Bluetooth, yet you find fault only with the IPhone...

What do you suggest they should use instead of Bluetooth?

 

[Darth Shiv]

And guess which Kernel had ARM support and many other platforms since very early on?

See this is the other side of the proprietary vs open source argument right here: Open source is just not as effective at monopolizing markets so Microsoft probably wouldn't have made Gates a billionaire like his proprietary stuff did.

Kernel support is NOT application support. Microsoft's strength was its x86 application ecosystem NOT the Windows kernel. ARM support is the same as WinRT. They are both irrelevant.

 

[thunderd]

All Gates had to do was make a x86 phone and they'd have taken the market, except they tried the locked down Windows RT approach and obviously failed.

x86 biggest problem is energy consumption, x86 phone would have 1h battery time in today's standard or lag in performance compared to ARM. x86 was never solution.

 

[Dimitriid]

Kernel support is NOT application support. Microsoft's strength was its x86 application ecosystem NOT the Windows kernel. ARM support is the same as WinRT. They are both irrelevant.

That's like saying "Concrete and rebar is not a usable building or structure" I would agree, but you probably cannot hope to build anything large without it now can you?

Application support was a defacto Microsoft advantage and for consumers its still is (I'd argue is no longer the case for enterprise level stuff on the other hand) but how much comes from it being a viable proprietary model as the core reason for success and how much was just Microsoft strong arm, monopolistic tactics like force feeding Windows into all hardware sales?

Throwing strong support behind the open source model has shown that it absolutely can result in widespread adoption as Linux is basically most of the building blocks for internet and cloud services computing. Most people would say this is even without but I say is because there is no central corporation like Microsoft dictating the direction of the Linux kernell or many of the open source projects built around it.

More over, a lot more companies, institutions and people get to enjoy many of these technologies instead of having to go pay Microsoft for the privilege they can now choose to pay Microsoft for their software as a service instead with Azure.

But can anyone say the world would be better off if there was no AWS or Google or many of the myriad of Cloud service providers and if there was just Azure and nothing else? We wouldn't have anywhere near the flexibility and options to build things up and cloud computer progress would be stiffled into non relevance under the weight of just making Microsoft richer as a priority.

 

[bandit8623]

Well even going back to the iPod days, the DACs and amps used in the iPhones and iPods were always meh. People who care about audio quality were not using a iPhone in the first place.

Bluetooth is convenience and sounds great. Were all listening to compressed music anyways. I stopped doing everything in FLAC and now pretty much only use Spotify. Why? Because in reality the difference is so small.

newer bluetooth that supports aac or ldac then yes the quality is not noticable. sbc bluetooth though is pretty bad.

 

[R3ckless]

The Zunes were so much better than iPods... Its really a shame MS came in late with those. The first gen Zune was a little meh, but the versions after that with the touch pad and later the touch screen were great. Plus they had better audio quality than iPods. On the Software side the Zune Desktop software was way ahead of the times. MS has a subscription service much like Spotify, just download what you want and enjoy. That was one of the best things about the Zune was the software subscription, $100/ year for all the music you want in your late teens was a awesome thing.

I really enjoyed my zune alot better then my ipod. It played music much louder (fuller) it worked well with better music file types. The desktop software for it was much better then itunes at the time. When the hard drive in it finally died and it was unusable I was sad because it was awesome. I did find out that it could be replaced but I never went ahead with that to fix it.

 

[DelJo63]

Come on -- fess up; we all know that Billy is BOUND and economically tied to the Andriod plantform because of M$. What he ACTUALLY does in fact in the privacy of his own home is entirely another matter.

 

[sac39507]

The Microsoft guy not a fan of Apple...hmm...I'm no genius and don't even need to read the article as to real reason why but...

Not rocket science here.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

The Microsoft guy not a fan of Apple...hmm...I'm no genius and don't even need to read the article as to real reason why but...

Not rocket science here.

Right, Bill is not a big fan of Apple....
Bill is a HUUUUGE fan of Apple!

https://www.gq.com.au/entertainment...k/news-story/0a4eacbafed1cc01f96c2aeed3e809d2

 

[sac39507]

Right, Bill is not a big fan of Apple....
Bill is a HUUUUGE fan of Apple!

https://www.gq.com.au/entertainment...k/news-story/0a4eacbafed1cc01f96c2aeed3e809d2

I've own stocks of companies I hated, so do millions of other people.