February 11, 2010: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is getting up to speed with the iPad excitement and his take on Apple’s tablet. His look? Apple’s upcoming device is kind of meh.
“There’s nothing on the iPad that I look at and think, ‘I wish Microsoft had done that,'” Gates tells one interviewer.
Bill Gates rejects the iPad
Such tepid responses to Apple’s breakthrough products—from the iPod to the iPhone and beyond—always look hilarious in retrospect. Looking back now, it’s clear that the iPad reshaped computing, media and education worldwide.
Gates’ rejection of the just-announced iPad clearly shows how hard it can be to spot a paradigm shift when it’s happening. He apparently failed to see past the iPad’s initial limitations to recognize that Apple’s tablets would become indispensable to millions of users.
The stunning response from Gates — a longtime friend of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — also reflects Microsoft’s long history of underestimating Apple’s ability to transform consumer technology.
The iPad is generating buzz
Gates’ comments came two weeks after the iPad’s first public appearance. Shortly after, the Apple tablet caused a stir again when Stephen Colbert used a pre-sale iPad to read the nominations during the Grammy Awards.
At this point, Gates was much more heavily involved in philanthropy than technology, having stepped down as CEO of Microsoft a decade earlier. however, it was no surprise that a journalist asked him about Apple’s latest must-have gadget when it was such a hot topic. And that’s exactly what longtime tech reporter Brent Schlender did. (Schlender previously conducted Jobs and Gates’ first joint interview in 1991.)
Gates had some personal investment in the tablet concept, as Microsoft had helped push the “tablet PC” form factor years earlier — with limited commercial success.
“You know, I’m a big supporter of touch and digital reading, but I still think the mainstream of that is going to be some mix of voice, pen and actual keyboard — in other words, the netbook,” Gates said. MoneyWatch.com. “So it’s not like I’m sitting there feeling the same way I did with the iPhone, where I’m like, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.'”
How did Gates’ predictions hold up?
In some ways, it’s easy to be harsh on Gates’ comments. Viewing the iPad as just a “reader” certainly ignores much of what would make it Apple’s fastest-selling new product when it went on sale a few months later. His reaction is reminiscent of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s infamous iPhone laugh (one of the biggest misjudgments in tech history) or Gates’ own prediction of doom for Apple’s next best-selling product, the iPod.
Yet Gates was not necessarily wrong. In the years that followed, Apple worked to improve the iPad’s functionality, including adding a stylus called the Apple Pencil, the Magic Keyboard, and voice-activated Siri. The idea that you can’t do real work on an iPad has mostly gone away at this point.
Meanwhile, Microsoft went further (albeit with less commercial success) by combining its mobile and desktop/laptop operating systems.
What do you think of Gates’ iPad comments with the benefit of hindsight? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
