Quick, stream of consciousness notes from Walt Mossberg’s D interview with Bill Gates. Not word for word unless it’s in quotes.
Opened with a great video spoof, in which Bill G interacts with Napoleon Dynamite. Microsoft is good at poking fun at themselves. They did something similar when Craig Mundie spoke at OScon, only that time, it was a spoof on Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, with Mundie in the Dr. Evil role.
Be aware that these are very quick notes, not a lot of editorializing. There is of course opinion in what I managed to write down, but I was mostly just trying to capture what Walt and Bill said, not to editorialize. Of course, I couldn’t type fast enough to get it all. And posting via
On Gates’ radar, security:
He thinks spam is getting better with sender authentication;
viruses down, phishing/identity theft and malware (spyware etc.)
up; bulk of successful attacks now social attacks – reputation
approach is how you have to deal with this;
feels good that there will be software solutions this year
Also criminal penalties starting to work.
“if you keep your OS up to date, you would have been perfectly
safe without anti-virus software. We still believe that extra
layers of protection are good. We will have that AV piece as
well in future. We’ll give people more choice on the AV front as
well.”
On 5 years since XP:
“What you want is layering, so you can update some things every
year, other things can wait for five years. You want one year,
three year, five year cycles.”
WM: is there a divergence between corporate customers and
consumers about how often they want an update?
BG: two kinds of updates: the kind of stuff that we do in
windows update. But when we change the user interface, most
people want us to make dramatic improvements, and not just mess
around with it. So maybe they want that in four years.
On Linux:
WM – Brazil, govts asking for Linux.
BG It’s way more complicated than that. Windows is still one of
the options.
WM: You don’t like it when it’s just one of the options…
BG No, that’s fine. We just want it to be the option that’s
selected :-)
In the 98% case, windows still the standard on the desktop.
On the server, windows and linux the only two OSes gaining share.
The Unix based servers are losing share.
This is because of the amazing power of the Intel-based
processors. People want an OS that runs on the Intel hardware.
We get some of that, Linux gets some of that.
WM: Media Center: What it is. Allows you to control your computer
from ten feet away, control your home media. Steve Jobs was
dismissive last night. It’s not a raging success. What’s the status?
BG – We’ve got 2 million users. We’ve got it down to $700.
WM – but the cheap ones don’t have a tv tuner, right.
WM – you’re going to have PCs that have a slot for a cable-card,
right? So you can have the PC be the set top box.
BG – Right.
WM – How about tablets? that hasn’t been a raging success either.
BG – This is all getting better. I encourage people to use it. It [using a tablet]
makes a huge difference to me. I couldn’t be nearly as efficient
without it. I don’t know when it will catch on, but it will be
like GUI. There will be a point where it just makes sense.
We’re hard core about this thing. It will change the way you
think about reading and note taking and meetings.
WM – Let me ask you about something Steve talked about last
night. What about doing software for cell phones, or cable?
There are these situations where you have big intermediaries.
You used to put out products direct to consumer, if they don’t
like it, you rev it. Now, if you want to put something out in
cellphones, you have these four carriers, the orifices he called
them.
BG: I’m sure it’s frustrating for him. (laughter)
We believe in the power of software, the ability to recognize the
data when you take a picture. The richness of a cellphone
requires a software company to do better user interfaces. and
because there’s more than one carrier, there’s going to be
competition. If we don’t do magic software, software will be
commoditized, but I think we can do something to create value.
We’ve done that in the cable world. IP TV is challenging the
cable companies, and now they are getting on board around this
next gen of video. If what you do is good enough, there’s plenty
in it for them as well.
WM – Your first phone software, had some nice features, but ATT
broke it to put their totally lame m-life logo there, so it no
longer worked the way you designed it. Wasn’t that frustrating
to you?
BG – We’re a very patient company. Three years ago, we had no carrier
customers. Today, we have 68. And there’s less stuff put in the
way by the carriers. So it’s getting better.
It depends how magic the software is, the more you get them out
of the way. But we have to work with them to make it good
business for them.
Re. music on phones and cooperation with hardware manufacturers
WM – Microsoft is not known as being kind to hardware
manufacturers
BG – Well compare what we did to what Apple did. They licensed
their software and then bankrupted their hardware vendors. We’re
in a partnership with our hardware vendors.
WM – cell phones aren’t thought of as connected to a PC, the user experience is bad. How will that work with music.
BG – people with high end phones do sync their email and calendars.
WM – that’s high end phones. Music has to be a lot more easy to
use.
BG – “I’ll be the first to admit that the sync experience isn’t as
good as it could be. But there’s no reason why syncing to this
(phone) couldn’t be as easy as syncing to a dedicated music
device.”
WM – What about google?
BG – Well, they are still perfect. We had a period of about ten
years like that. You should buy their stock at any price. :-)
WM – you’re going to have major desktop search built into
longhorn
BG – I was glad to see Steve [Jobs] making the case last night
for integrating this into the OS. It’s a good pitch.
We actually have the APIs for desktop search now, but it won’t
get really adopted till ISVs can count on it being in every app.
Wants advice — not sure how much to charge.
Demo
It’s “word wheeling” — every letter you type, it’s changing the
results. Shows a demo that looks a lot like spotlight, but it
does have a preview capability when you select any file, you can
see the contents.
Fast search will be especially powerful for searching outlook.
WM – won’t this be good for the DOJ
BG: Yes. We live the examined life. I can’t write an email
that hasn’t been looked at by one hundred lawyers.
genre keywords to find particular data types
can create playlists from the search tool.
WM – I think it should be free.
BG – So let’s make it free then.
Another thing: What we should do with the home page.
You have the very constructed home page, and the one that’s
essentially blank. So we have a bar that gives lots of options
for pinning stuff to your personal portal page. Once you pin
these things up, that becomes your home page.
Refers to it as the dashboard. Walt asks if that’s the name.
Says no, it’s the start page. Have to be careful with name.
Shows adding RSS feeds. Doesn’t seem to work, hotel internet is
down. Now working.
Can pin recent searches.
WM – how is this different from my.yahoo?
BG – difference is that this starts with that blank page. We’ve
had my.msn too. But there you start with more of a full page and
customize. This works from the other end.
We’re also doing a lot with local. Shows finding Walt’s house
from satellite imagery. “We’ve been doing this for ten years.”
We’ve got a release this summer that will take this whole virtual
earth thing to a new level. Shows pure satellite view, then with
the labeling of maps, routes, points of interest loaded on image.
Shows adding points of interest to scratch pad.
The satellite imagery we have today, one pixel represents one
foot.
This is the summer release I’m showing you. But we’re working on
new things. But we’re working with partners like Pictometry to
get images from planes that are taken at 45 degree angles. Much
better. You get angular views as well as top-down views.
(Very impressive on zoom.)
Walt: Aren’t you going to start getting into privacy issues?
BG – We’ve had this up for ten years, so we’re very familiar with
these issues.
Local and mapping are going to come together as one thing.
WM – What’s the difference between what you’re doing and what
google is doing?
We’ve been doing this a long time. The pictometry deal is an
exclusive. But there will be a lot of competition.
WM – so you’re going to look up and see a Microsoft plane, a
google plane, a yahoo plane!
WM – let’s talk about xbox. You’ve just brought out another
platform, xbox 360. In the first round, Sony beat you pretty
badly in sales.
BG – It was certain that in the last round that Sony would be the
winner. We wanted just to get some experience and credibility.
We didn’t expect to make any money. We have 30% share in the US,
and we learned a lot.
Shows promo clip on xbox.
WM – It’s just a better game machine. What’s the big deal?
BG – Well, that is a big deal. It makes the games much more approachable. So we think the volume will be much bigger. But we also think that this is a convergence device. It’s a high definition extender of the PC. You get everything down into the living room.
WM – wait? I’m an HP who’s making a media center PC and now you’re competing with me?
BG – Well no. You have a set top box that can do HD. You have an xbox that can do gaming and HD, and you have a media center PC. But this lets you share that media center PC with every TV in the house.
WM – sounds more like Apple. YOu’re making the integrated device.
BG – We need to create value for everyone. But in the xbox market, we felt we had to do it all ourselves. I have to admit that’s a luxury, to do everything ourselves end to end.
WM – doesn’t run windows, or any version of windows. Doesn’t run on intel.
BG – UI just like media center.
Q&A:
Guy from Zone Labs: You’ve created this security nightmare by bad design, and now you announce a product to profit from that.
BG: We have made most of what we do in this area free. But because there’s an anti-virus market, where people pay for it, we’re offering a paid product.
ZL: Why aren’t you partnering?
BG: Well, we’re parnering with one of the companies, which we bought :-) But we’ll make it easy for people to find other products.
Next person: Computers in education a big boondoggle. Why don’t you buy one of the education search companies, and give it to schools when they buy a PC?
BG: Internet is just a tool. It’s fantastic for a motivated person. Don’t know the companies you’re talking about. General search can work well.
Bob Frankston: What are you doing to bring back the old days, when it was easy for individual developers to bring in new functionality?
BG: I don’t follow. Any developer can write apps.
Bob Frankston: We have to wait for longhorn.
BG: All kinds of things are completely decoupled from Longhorn. Web services, etc. Major releases are packaging things up.
BF: Taking cellphone as an example, things are moving much slower than if things were more open.
BG: Well, we can work with the phone companies, or against them. We’re choosing to work with them. Eventually, one of the models will work out.
But no question, it’s not as open as the PC. But that’s also why we need software layering and have security problems, so there are some tradeoffs but it’s a beautiful thing.
Jean-Baptiste Su: What about the EU?
BG: We’re big on compliance. We just want to get that done, so we can move on.