Disappointed in Mr. Gates

I don't dislike Bill Gates by any means, other than the sound of his voice. But here recently he's made some statements of an anti-apple nature, that if where true would be appreciated. I would like to see him retaliate to the likes of the Mac PC ads. However, a few things William has stated recently are just quite ridiculous.

First incident:
On CNN, O'Brien threw Bill Gates a curveball (That should have been expected and therefore not a curveball) when interviewing him about the debut of Windows Vista.

No, no, no. Actually, uh, the, we're ahead [slight pause] on a lot, uh, there's whole areas where we've innovated like Media Center and tablet, uh, that, uh, no one else is doing

Verrrry innovative, watching movies and listening to music on a computer. So if the computer is plugged into a television it's innovative? I like Media Center and it is without a doubt more advanced than Front Row (mainly because it has a DVR) and it was first. However if there where a reason "no one else is doing", "innovations" like Media Center and Tablet PC it may be because of their lack of revenue and popularity. But this was a valid response, he should have stopped there.

and the parental control, that's the first time that's been done.

I don't know what their growing up in Redmond, but Parental Controls debuted in Mac OS X Tiger in 2005. Lies.

Even in this photo area, you know, we'd love to have you compare how we've done, make it easy to make a DVD, edit high definition movies.

iPhoto, 2002. iDVD 2001, iMovie 1999 with HD editing added at the beginning of 2005.

You finally release something similar 2-5 years later and not only call it an innovation, but use it as a defense (read: admission of guilt) that you are mimicking your nemesis. You might as well have thrown the Zune in there, that's innovative right, something that no one else is doing. Bill your a smart dude, maybe you should prepare yourself for just such a question, which is more than valid by the way. Get your head out of your butt, and figure out what's going on.

I'm as tired of the whole Windows copies Mac thing as anyone, but you are the former CEO of a the biggest software manufacturer in the world, in a public forum. Have a good answer prepared for a common and reasonable alegation of the product your promoting. Here's an idea. Hire a guy (if you have enough money) who's sole job is to watch apple and tell you what their doing, just so you know. Just like the entire teams you have working on your software now, except instead of tying to emulate it he will tell you about it, because your obviously out of the loop. This may save you from any awkward situations in the future.

Second Incident:
In his interview with Bill Gates in Newsweek, Steven Levy pointed out that many of the new features in Windows Vista are similar to features already in Mac OS X.

Gates’ response:

I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise.

Fascinating indeed, I don't really know where to begin, but I'll keep this short. First, I think Gates actually believes Microsoft came up with these features first, Apple copied them, and Apple got them into their final product first because Microsoft was spending so much time improving Vista’s security. This is impossible and untrue. Second "Security guys don't break the Mac every single day", (and thanks for the refferences Bill) and if they do, why don't Hackers? I'm not saying Vista isn't more secure than OS X, I'm very willing to believe this and hopeful of it. But seriously, every day, but no real world exploits? ..."Your machine can be taken over totally"?...a month to take over Vista? It just sounds like the knee-jerk rantings of a kid who was just told his dad got beaten up by a girl.