News >> Browse Articles >> Technology and Innovation
Bill Gates: The iPad May be Apple's Biggest Mistake
Photo: World Economic Forum/AP
Featured Author:
DailyTech
DailyTech is a leading online magazine for a well-educated, tech audience. Its readers enjoy hard-hitting and up to the minute CE, PC, IT and information technology news. DailyTech’s fast-moving content also reaches out via news syndications, public portals, and forums.
More articles from this author:
Jason Mick
When Apple’s Steve Jobs took the stage to announce Apple’s new tablet, the
iPad, it was obviously a moment of tremendous pride and personal
satisfaction. To Jobs, the iPad was a fresh, ambitious
new "magical" release from Apple that looked geared to become the next
iPhone or iPod.
Despite that ambitious line of thinking,
public reception since the event has been decidedly mixed. Criticism began with the tablet’s name, which reminded many of a 2007
Mad TV skit (YouTube) about a feminine hygiene product from Apple
that shared the same name. However, the criticism by many ran
far deeper — the input seemed clumsy, the device lacks the
personalized support from the media industry that other Apple
launches have had, 3G models are unavailable at launch, and the
tablet doesn’t support Adobe Flash, one of the integral components of
the internet today.
Now Bill Gates has become perhaps the
highest profile figure to date to offer criticism of the tablet.
He states in an
interview with BNET‘s
Brent Schlender, "You know, I’m a big believer in touch and
digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the
pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the
mainstream on that. So, it’s not like I sit there and feel
the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ’Oh my God, Microsoft
didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s
nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had
done it.‘“
That significant because Gates has
acknowledged both publicly and privately when past Apple products
wowed. Recently
released emails from the now-settled antitrust case Comes v.
Microsoft antitrust litigation chronicle Gates past
frustrations.
Discussing Apple’s high profile iTunes store launch in 2003, he writes to a fellow executive, “Steve Jobs
ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get
user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing
things…However I think we need some plan to prove that even though
Jobs has us a bit flat footed again we move quick and both match and
do stuff better.”
His fellow executive, Jim Allchin, was
even more blunt. He writes, “We were smoked.”
However,
it’s clear that Gates and many of the tech industry’s biggest players
went from being afraid of being “smoked” yet again by the
latest and greatest Apple product, to being largely apathetic,
post-iPad launch. And that’s a troublesome sign for Apple.
For
all his success, Jobs has had some painful misses. Most notably
he championed Apple TV, a pet project which was never popular, even
among the Apple faithful. Apple has let Apple TV quietly die down as its other recent stars — the iPod Touch and iPhone — stole the show. Will Apple perhaps do
the same for the iPad? That remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure — Bill Gates isn’t losing any sleep over it.
© 2009, DailyTech
