Gates: iPod not “sustainable”
May 12, 2005 by Mike Wendland
Sounds like a little wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Gates, doesn’t it? Gates predicts demise of the iPod.
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Wow, I can’t believe how off-mark this is. I like my iPod because it’s custom designed to play music, and kick ass at it. The idea of putting yet another silly thing on my cell phone is not only offputting, it’s ridiculous. Yes, I’d love to kill the battery of my communications device by using it to decode compressed audio.
And the part he mentions where phone numbers become obsolete? hah. I find a phone number easier to remember and enter than the spelling of someone’s name, or what ISP they’re using that week. Even pretending that someone’s phone number became something like 2483797826@nextel, that’s more to remember than a 10 digit number (and if you don’t call out of area much, you can generally get away with remembering just the last 7). I think Gates has finally lost it.
PS: When is the freep going to publish your articles via RSS? Podcasting is neat and all, but I’d much rather have your articles in my RSS aggregator.
ONE DAY… Cellphones WILL be able to have the same functionality as even the most powerful iPods… But that day is a LONG WAY OFF… Technology regarding the miniaturization of hard drives, miniaturization of processor components, and improvements in battery life are nowhere near the point where cellphones can rival even a paltry 15 GB iPod… Gates is in his own “reality distortion field.”
Agreed, Jess, but as we gain the capability of cramming more crap in the same box, we’ll start having to ask ourselves how many eggs we want to place in one basket.
(In my case, I want specialized devices that all do one thing, and do it VERY WELL, and I want them to interoperate, like one headset that listens to my ipod, with a swing down boom for cell use. When the phone rings, the ipod should pause, and my cell phone should allow me to answer with one button.
Bluetooth has much cooler apps than just stupid looking headsets.
There are times where the integration of seemingly unrelated components turn out something that is unexpected and REALLY cool ? like my Treo 600. In this case, mixing a cell phone with a palm computer made dialing and keeping track of my contacts TREMENDOUSLY easier (especially with iSync on my Mac). I agree with you that mixing an iPod with a cell phone doesn?t really add extra functionality (except for maybe convenience). It?s not like I?m going to play a background MP3 while I put someone on hold?
Hmmm, Gates is now a predictor of the future?
I wonder why he didn’t invoke this talent 10 years ago and predict how many security holes his ‘enterprise’ operating systems would have?
I’m not interested in the do-it-all super phone. I’m perfectly happy with the devices I currently carry (a cell phone, iPod, PDA, digital camera), even if my bag is heavy. Phones are so fragile and easy to lose; I wouldn’t want one with all these features that would cost god-knows-what and you might lose the first weekend you had it. We all know how often you drop a telephone, whereas I’ve never dropped my iPod or PDA.
I, for one, hope Gates is right. I am an Apple fan through and through, but I would love to be able to not have to carry a PDA, cell phone, and iPod, and have it all be in one device! It just makes sense that I shouldn’t have to lug another piece of equipment around, on the off chance that I might need it, when I can carry one piece, and it serves all my needs. Those who can’t see this seem to have forgotten that, 20 years ago, most people couldn’t imagine having a personal computer in a home, and even as short a time as ten years ago, many people couldn’t imagine having a portable computer that they can take with them, yet many of these people own such devices today! I’m sitting here at my desk, looking at an iPod, Sony Clie, and Motorola cell phone; why, when I could do it all with one piece?
That’s one of the reasons I’m not replacing my cell for a while, even though good cells/PDAs are already on the market. I love my iPod, but it’s gone the minute a good cell/PDA/portable music player hits the market! Now all I hope for, fervently, is that Apple is the company that brings this device to us.
Desktop computers will go away someday. Should we have a burial service for them now? They will change into something else . . . at least we hope so. Does that mean computers as we know them today are a fad?
Pad and paper didn’t dissappear like they were supposed to when the computer came along. Video didn’t kill radio, DVD didn;t kill VHS . . . yet. The tail on these things is often longer than we imagine. We tend to overestiamte the imact of things in the short run and underestimate thier imapct in the long run.
If Apple designs iPod into a phone does that mean that the iPod is dead? Methinks not.
I think that Gates has a point, but what i think is that the people at Apple will not make the same mistake as they did some years ago(like firing Steve Jobs), as a i see it Steve came as a hurricane first empowering Apple’s computer then creating the iPod, he might be a perfectionist but he is a genius, my guess for the future is that he is alredy thinking on the subject and has two solutions that he could choose from, one is giving the iPod a mobile phone capability with only Apple’s technology or joining up with another mobile phone company to give a mobile phone iPod capability, which ends up be the same thing only with the diference in leading Apple to a diferent direction.