Bad week

Newsweek interview gets Gates testy and defensive.

CNN’s Miles O’Brien uncharacterestically grows balls and asks Gates about Vista’s similarities to OS X.

O’BRIEN: Frankly, a lot of what I see here seems to mimic a little bit OS-10. Were you going after a specific look there, the Mac look or…

GATES: No, no, no. Actually, we’re ahead on a lot.

The Daily Show makes fun of Gates’ appearance the day after:

The Today Show had its own Apple questions.

The early award for the silliest Vista vulnerability.

Chris Pirillo thinks Vista promotion is atrociously bad.

DUDE! MAKE THEM STOP! SERIOUSLY, THESE ARE EMBARASSINGLY BAD. I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE MY CAPS LOCK KEY TO CONVEY JUST HOW MUCH OF A WASTE OF MONEY THIS WAS.

PC Mag concludes the launch was ho-hum.

And numerous outlets decide on a keyword for Vista:

Merc says it was a yawner.

Wired decides the launch was a yawn.

Xinhua concurs.

Some Candian outpost says it was a yawner.

This post about Vista is making me yawn.

Microsoft and the pirate economy

Har! Techdirt has a post about the Romanian president talk about “what a wonderful boon for the Romanian economy pirated Microsoft software has been, noting that it helped create a Romanian IT industry.”

Techdirt further notes:

The growth of any IT industry in the country, aided by the unauthorized copies, almost definitely resulted in many more legitimate licenses being purchased than would have happened otherwise. Yet, these days, Microsoft won’t admit that at all, and rather pretends the opposite is true; claiming that unauthorized copies “harm” the economy, by not having that money go into the local Microsoft bank account. Of course, confronted with all of this, Bill Gates stood mute and didn’t say anything about the issue of how such unauthorized copying helped make Microsoft so successful.

Hey, guess what? That’s how Microsoft grew in this country. Remember how people used to clamor for the same OS at home that they used at work? It wasn’t because of Microsoft’s awesome software, it was because they could install the applications that they used at work on their home computer, for FREE. Notice how once XP activation kicked in that upgrades fell off the deep end? Notice how there are more switchers to Macs among home users? Microsoft cannot compete on the merit of their software. Activation is the biggest switcher inducer. In the absence of activation, Microsoft software quality issues notwithstanding, Apple share would be south of 1%. Here’s hoping that XP/Vista/Office activation never goes away.

Inquiring minds want to know

The Inquirer catches with the Woz and his take on the iPhone:

CO-FOUNDER of Apple Computer Steve Wozniak confessed that he is not super pleased with Iphone design. He can see why some of the compromises have been made and this is of course only the first generation device. He also can not understand why Apple gave exclusive to Cingular, an unfavoured player in theAmerican cell market.

The reason to go with Cingular really simple: it doesn’t matter who Apple picks – there’ll be an invitable backlash. T-Mobile? Weak network and weak customer support. Verizon? Bad customer service. Sprint? Please!

The best choice would have been to go open, but we now know why Apple didn’t want to go that route: control (and that visual voicemail thing).