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qtip919

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 24, 2002
279
0
qtip919 said:
He has a 2 year transition plan which begins effectively today

Oh, and he will become a part timer ... I wonder if he will be a contract worker? What will he do for health care!!! ;0
 

seabass069

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2005
226
0
Whether you are a fan of Microsoft or not, Bill Gates has done a tremendous job. Macs/Apple would not be here today if it wasn't for Bill Gates. Did he or did he not borrow technology? Who cares. He definitely improved on the technology and here we are today with Macs that are awesome. We owe a lot to Bill Gates and all that he has done for the computing world. Lets not criticize him as he slowly moves on to things that are far more important than our gaming and internet computers. He is saving lives and that is important. If more people were like Bill Gates and his foundation, we would have a safer world to live in.
 

OttawaGuy

macrumors 6502a
Mar 28, 2006
541
36
Bill Gates announced Thursday afternoon he will step down as CEO of Microsoft Corp. and company President Steve Ballmer will take over the CEO role. The changes were to take effect immediately. :eek:
 

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
"This is a hard decision," said Mr Gates, adding that he was not retiring but "reordering [his] priorities."

Mr Gates will continue to serve as the company's chairman and advise on key development projects after July 2008.
 

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
OttawaGuy said:
Bill Gates announced Thursday afternoon he will step down as CEO of Microsoft Corp. and company President Steve Ballmer will take over the CEO role. The changes were to take effect immediately. :eek:


Steve Ballmer's been CEO for a couple years BTW
 

aricher

macrumors 68020
Feb 20, 2004
2,211
1
Chi-il
Funny, that should be about the time Vista SP1 hits the streets. Maybe by then they'll have WinFS available. Bye Bye Billy Boy. I'd walk away in shame as well.
152656346_1613ec3d89.jpg
 

OnceUGoMac

macrumors 6502a
Mar 3, 2004
914
1
OttawaGuy said:
Bill Gates announced Thursday afternoon he will step down as CEO of Microsoft Corp. and company President Steve Ballmer will take over the CEO role. The changes were to take effect immediately. :eek:

Not true. Ballmer's been the head of MS for years now. I see you posted this lie in the other thread as well.
 

skoker

macrumors 68000
Aug 6, 2005
1,839
0
Blue Velvet said:
Controversial. What makes you say that?

Apple would have very likely collapsed if Microsuck had not bought out a large part of the company in the '90s. The stock has mostly expired, but there was a bad clause in the deal that allowed Microsoft to 'borrow' the look and feel of the Mac OS, therefore scuttling a Antitrust (I think) lawsuit filled by Apple around '96-ish.
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
skoker said:
Apple would have very likely collapsed if Microsuck had not bought out a large part of the company in the '90s. The stock has mostly expired, but there was a bad clause in the deal that allowed Microsoft to 'borrow' the look and feel of the Mac OS, therefore scuttling a Antitrust (I think) lawsuit filled by Apple around '96-ish.

Misinformation Police! Feet back and spread 'em!

None of this actually happened.
 

Chaszmyr

macrumors 601
Aug 9, 2002
4,267
86
To all that say Microsoft's investment in Apple is what saved the company:

If it weren't for Microsoft, Apple wouldn't have been in a position to need saving in the first place!
 

Peace

Cancelled
Apr 1, 2005
19,546
4,556
Space The Only Frontier
MS NEVER bought out a large chunk of Apple in the 90's..Bill Gates gave Steve Jobs/Apple Computer $50,000,000 (or something like that) in exchange for adding internet explorer on the Mac desktop...
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
Peace said:
MS NEVER bought out a large chunk of Apple in the 90's..Bill Gates gave Steve Jobs/Apple Computer $50,000,000 (or something like that) in exchange for adding internet explorer on the Mac desktop...

Not quite. I've been playing whack-a-mole with this myth for so long, I developed a cut-and-paste response:

On August 6, 1997 Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft would be investing $150 million in Apple and was committing to producing Microsoft Office for the Macintosh for at least five more years.

Q: The deal included a technology sharing agreement between the companies. What was that all about?
A: The driving force in this deal was the resolution of a long-standing dispute over patents.

Q: The investment was in non-voting stock, which Microsoft was committed to holding for a minimum of three years. If the investment was a "gift" on Microsoft's part, why the three year minimum term?
A: Because it wasn't a gift -- this is how the companies worked out their legal differences. Additional cash was quietly exchanged behind the scenes. How much was not disclosed.

Q: Microsoft committed to Office for the Mac for five years. If this commitment was completely voluntary, how can the five year term be explained?
A: It can't be explained that way, because it wasn't voluntary. These were the agreed-upon terms.

A few of most common myths about the Microsoft-Apple deal debunked:

Myth 1: Without Microsoft's investment, Apple was doomed.
Reality: Apple had lost over $1 billion in the 18 months before the investment, but in August 1997, they still had $1.2 million in cash on-hand and annual sales of around $7 billion. The $150 million investment did not "save" Apple, though arguably the positive publicity did.

Myth 2: Microsoft was acting to preserve their market for Mac Office.
Reality 2: A nonsensical argument. Was the Mac's 5% market-share worth $150 million to Microsoft? If Apple went out of business, would Apple's former customers revert to yellow legal tablets and pocket calculators before they'd buy a Windows computer and Office for Windows?

Myth 3: Microsoft invested in Apple to give them "cover" in the on-going federal antitrust investigation.
Reality 3: This assumes Microsoft's commitments were essential to Apple's survival. If this is so, does Microsoft's ability to issue a life or death sentence over their only competitor make them look MORE or LESS like a monopoly? In fact, within weeks of the announcement, the deal was investigated by the Department of Justice. If this move was intended to give Microsoft breathing room in the antitrust case, then it certainly didn't work. It didn't, because it wasn't.

Myth 4: This deal was a "big win" for Bill Gates.
Reality 4: Apple gained at least $150 million, Microsoft's public endorsement, and a lot of positive press. What did Microsoft gain? Bill Gates appeared on a big screen at MacWorld, where he was roundly booed by the audience. They also got Apple to call MSIE the Mac's "default" browser, even though Apple would still be distributing Netscape. This fabulous deal only cost Microsoft $150 million, and then some.

Myth 5: Microsoft owns a big part of Apple.
Reality 5: At the time it occurred in 1997, the $150 million investment amounted to roughly 5% of Apple's market capitalization, but was held in a special class of nonvoting shares. According to the terms of the deal, Microsoft was allowed to liquidate these shares in three years, which they've almost certainly done by now.
 

JackSYi

macrumors 6502a
Feb 20, 2005
890
0
Heres my 2 cents on Bill Gates. He is a brilliant Businessman. But he does not try and change the world in ways Steve Jobs strives to do. I feel like Bill Gates only wants to make money and does not care about the user experience.

I am just rambling on because I see Steve Jobs as my first idol and its angers me that he does not get recognized in ways that Bill Gates does. There is no way people would stand in line at 3am to see Bill Gates speak about upcoming Microsoft products.

Ok, sorry if what I said angers some of you, but I felt like I needed to say something about Bill Gates.

(Edit: Wow, that didn't make any sense.)
 

qtip919

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 24, 2002
279
0
JackSYi said:
Heres my 2 cents on Bill Gates. He is a brilliant Businessman. But he does not try and change the world in ways Steve Jobs strives to do. I feel like Bill Gates only wants to make money and does not care about the user experience.

I am just rambling on because I see Steve Jobs as my first idol and its angers me that he does not get recognized in ways that Bill Gates does. There is no way people would stand in line at 3am to see Bill Gates speak about upcoming Microsoft products.

Ok, sorry if what I said angers some of you, but I felt like I needed to say something about Bill Gates.

(Edit: Wow, that didn't make any sense.)

None of this makes any sense at all.

A very important part of becoming great in any business is vision. Gates and Ballmer, Jobs, Allen, etc etc all had a vision. They had passion about technology and computers.

One (Gates) made controversial decisions that proved to be brilliant business strategy (this is with respect to MS DOS)

Gates is also a grade A genius. He is not a user experience designer, a graphic design specialist or a usability expert. But for his time, and for decades after, he made one brilliant BUSINESS move after another. Meanwhile, the various idiots who drove Apple into the ground have no one to blame but themselves.

Its nice to see Jobs making Apple great again, but if you want to talk about misinformation, Jobs never invented the ipod. Stick that in your pipe. In reality, Jobs got as lucky with the ipod (not his idea) as Gates did with MS DOS, MS Office, Windows, SQL, Exchange, Outlook, etc, etc, etc,

As an interesting side note: both MS DOS and iPods have something very interesting in common - both could have been the explict property of IBM. And we could easily be talking about a world in which neither Apple, Microsoft nor the ipod or legal music downloads ever came to exist. Thank the good Lord that no one in IBM has the mental capacity to spot a real winner when they see one...
 
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