Headline shoud really read:
Bill Gates "PRAYS" Cell Phones Will Overtake MP3 Players, "DESPERATELY HOPES" iPod 'Unsustainable'

This from a hedge fund guy who contributes to one of the financial sites I read daily:

"Anyway, the Street is abuzz with word that Gates says iPod is in trouble. What's he supposed to say? "Apple won the digital music wars before we even got on the battlefield"?

.. lovely line

try this

Looks like he stuck holding worthless WMA palyers while he iPod flies higher into the sky.

But al least RC will be shaking his butt next to his tralier with his Shmuckster...I meant Napster to go device.

Anybody going to wrap a cell phone around your neck with earbuds connected? I thought not.......ummmmmm

Is this the same Bill Gates who once said that "512 kb should be enough memory for anybody"? The very same Mr. Gates who was busy thinking about something he called The Information SuperHighway which would be concentrated around the TV, not the PC, while Internet happened behind his back? Is this the same Billy who was busy playing poker at campus when his friend Paul came and woke him up, telling him that the microcomputer was about to come reality?
If it is the same, I wouldn't trust him as a prophet.
But he's got a near-photographic memory, so don't show him any of your blueprints...

The best comment is "no comment". Shows how irrelevant this particular comment is.

Wondering if he's going to make a new version of Microsoft BOB for Cell phones.
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html

PS - although the Mac is not the mass choice - it is the best choice and is showing new support among the common user. Bill SHOULD be worried.

Picture the hordes out jogging, and working out at the gym, clutching their CELLPHONES....

yeah, that's gonna happen.

Think of all the primary situations people use their iPods in, and then imagine substituting a cellphone.

It's a ludicrous idea.

"bet on the mobile phone for sure"

? I love how now, after more than a decade of use, he thinks cell phones are a safe bet.

No wonder MS is about 10 years behind where they should be.

[quote= ]"I think that when someone is 60 years old, he should better leave it to someone else to follow trends in technology. But until then, there's still a lot to do."[/quote]
I love that he doesn't even claim to be innovative. He even plans for his replacement to follow other companies. And yet he thinks his company is a better fit than Apple to produce a new product?

- Jon

Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

Hey Gates, guess what?

Some of us don't WANT to carry a phone around "24-7." Gimme an iPod and Albert Collins over telemarketers blabbing on the phone any day.

I'm not sure I would totally agree with Bill, but he does have a point. The market is really moving towards converging technologies. PDAs and Cell phones are merging. The iPod even has some minor PDA functions (contacts, cals, etc). So, the idea that music enabled cell phones can give the iPod a run for the money isn't that crazy.

The question isn't "Do you think I want to carry a cell phone everywhere when I want to listen to music?" The question is more like, "Do I want to have to carry a cell phone, AND my iPod if I want both?" If your music machine can take phone calls, AND be your PDA, AND be your phone, there's only one thing to carry. A nice feature.

Personally, I have 3 things right now. Looking to merge 2 of them (PDA and phone). I like my iPod detached right now, but that's not because I wouldn't like to merge them. It's because I don't like how they are doing it yet. But I'd trust Apple to do it better than Bill just about any day.

I wouldn't at all be surprised to see a phone attachment for an iPod sometime soon.

Guest - you hit the nail on the head. Technologies are merging. We will look back on the days when we had seperate devices and laugh. The cellphone/pda/mp3 is on it's way.

Just because it's Bill Gates, doesn't mean he's wrong.

I listen to my iPod to escape from annoying things like my cell phone. Why would I want to have my music be a part of that device?
As long as Apple keeps evolving the iPod, it should be sustainable for sometime to come. Nothing last forever, but the iPod still has a lot of life left to it.

Convergence of small digital objects is generally a good idea. However, I mainly use my iPod in airplanes. A cell phone can't even be turned on after the cabin door closes. I think the iPod is safe for a while.

During my walk this morning I missed a cell call from my wife. I had my iPod and couldn't hear the cell phone over the sound of the music. it wan't an important call, but that is not the point. It would be nice to a combination iPod and cell phone if:

1. It had a decent interface

2. Held a lot of music

3. Connects to iTunes the way the iPod does

4. The call waiting feature could be turned off for those times I don't want to be disturbed while listening to music. Better yet, you could select who can interup the music.

Quote

squintbro wrote:
I listen to my iPod to escape from annoying things like my cell phone. Why would I want to have my music be a part of that device?
As long as Apple keeps evolving the iPod, it should be sustainable for sometime to come. Nothing last forever, but the iPod still has a lot of life left to it.

This week a flight attendant told me I couldn't use my Treo 650 (or any other multifunctional cell phone), even though the cell phone function was turned off. So you can't listen to music on your cell phone while you fly. But the iPod is airline friendly.

Yep, Bill is at it again...trying to be the clairvoyant of technologies...he must be really desperate about Apple, firing his babbling machine all around the globe...get a life and be a Man, Bill...it's amazing how you can't even create something with your billions and your gigantic corporation...pathetic.

Quote

Tiger wrote:
Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

You may fault Gates for whatever you like but his foundation has been putting a lot of that money to good work, particularly in respect to 3rd world health issues (like malaria research) that get short shrift from the industrialized nations. IMHO, his vision in this domain far exceeds the political hacks that run our countries. I forgot, what does the Jobs Foundation support?

The Gates' Foundation
Endowment of $27bn.
$7.1bn in grants since 1994.
Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund.
Average grant: $903,711.
Supports work in more than 100 countries.

Converging functions is as old as making things to sell. It's a spear, it's a fishing pole, it's firewood! Not only a rock, but a nice pillow! RonCo, vacuum cleaner/hairclipper. I honestly don't see any "all in one" device that was ever a must have. Multi-tools? No fun to use. Seriously. Consumers don't bother to set the time on their video players. Most don't even include the function anymore. Who wants to be bothered, really? Life is complex enough. Keep it simple.

Quote

Guest wrote:

Quote

Tiger wrote:
Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

You may fault Gates for whatever you like but his foundation has been putting a lot of that money to good work, particularly in respect to 3rd world health issues (like malaria research) that get short shrift from the industrialized nations. IMHO, his vision in this domain far exceeds the political hacks that run our countries. I forgot, what does the Jobs Foundation support?

The Gates' Foundation
Endowment of $27bn.
$7.1bn in grants since 1994.
Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund.
Average grant: $903,711.
Supports work in more than 100 countries.

Bill Gates is great when it comes to giving to charities.
That does not mean he's great at making predictions about music devices.
He has taken a few shots at Apple lately, and it's starting to look like he's a little too preoccupied with with Steve Jobs' little company.

The Gates Foundation has only been around about 5 years. Furthermore it is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I wonder how much his wife had to do with the creation of the ogranization. Would he be such a humanitarian if he didn't get a tax break?

Quote

Guest wrote:

Quote

Tiger wrote:
Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

You may fault Gates for whatever you like but his foundation has been putting a lot of that money to good work, particularly in respect to 3rd world health issues (like malaria research) that get short shrift from the industrialized nations. IMHO, his vision in this domain far exceeds the political hacks that run our countries. I forgot, what does the Jobs Foundation support?

The Gates' Foundation
Endowment of $27bn.
$7.1bn in grants since 1994.
Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund.
Average grant: $903,711.
Supports work in more than 100 countries.

Will the iPod exist in its current form(s) in ten years' time? Almost certainly no. Why? Because technological changes will have prescribed changes on its design. Will it exist? Quite possibly. Why? Because the very concept of having a music collection in a portable form will still continue.

The technology doesn't matter. Design, to a certain extent, doesn't matter. There were MP3 players around before the iPod. All it required was a bit of momentum while the meme of portable music took hold. It wasn't until Apple spun the ball from the immobile forwards along the back line to the agile wing three-quarter (rugby reference, in case you're wondering) and ran to touch down between the posts did the usability match up with the nascent desire.

Good design will out, not always but often. It happens for a short time then something else will take over. Gates is right that the iPod in its current design is unsustainable in the long run. Other designs will come and go, but people will still want portable music. The Walkman, as we have seen, became unsustainable, although it hasn't faded away completely. It was overtaken. It evolved, and conceptually and actually became an iPod.

Will phone and music-player technology converge? Who knows for sure. Gates doesn't. I sure don't, but I know nothing. Jobs doesn't. I hope that Apple stays in the forefront. I bet Jobs does too. I bet Gates would prefer it didn't.

Since I don't want a cell phone, ever...

The Gates Foundation actually started in 1994. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the product of that original foundation. As far as being motivated solely be tax breaks or his wife, what pieces of evidence exist in your small brain that tell you that?

Quote

Guest wrote:
The Gates Foundation has only been around about 5 years. Furthermore it is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I wonder how much his wife had to do with the creation of the ogranization. Would he be such a humanitarian if he didn't get a tax break?

Quote

Guest wrote:

Quote

Tiger wrote:
Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

You may fault Gates for whatever you like but his foundation has been putting a lot of that money to good work, particularly in respect to 3rd world health issues (like malaria research) that get short shrift from the industrialized nations. IMHO, his vision in this domain far exceeds the political hacks that run our countries. I forgot, what does the Jobs Foundation support?

The Gates' Foundation
Endowment of $27bn.
$7.1bn in grants since 1994.
Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund.
Average grant: $903,711.
Supports work in more than 100 countries.

Quote

Guest wrote:

Quote

Guest wrote:

Quote

Tiger wrote:
Get out and enjoy life. Spend our, I mean your, Billions. Help our economy. Heck, you could bail out several third world countries from their debt.

Or even better, buy yourself a seat on the next space shuttle.

A one way ticket will do nicely.

You may fault Gates for whatever you like but his foundation has been putting a lot of that money to good work, particularly in respect to 3rd world health issues (like malaria research) that get short shrift from the industrialized nations. IMHO, his vision in this domain far exceeds the political hacks that run our countries. I forgot, what does the Jobs Foundation support?

The Gates' Foundation
Endowment of $27bn.
$7.1bn in grants since 1994.
Largest grant: $1bn to the United Negro College Fund.
Average grant: $903,711.
Supports work in more than 100 countries.

Bill Gates is great when it comes to giving to charities.
That does not mean he's great at making predictions about music devices.
He has taken a few shots at Apple lately, and it's starting to look like he's a little too preoccupied with with Steve Jobs' little company.

No matter what you think of Gates or Jobs, both of them have had and continue to have an impact on world culture on an almost incomprehensible level.

In some respects he has to be right about convergence. I'm typing on a machine right now--as ugly as Dell can make 'em--in which a typewriter, dictionary, file cabinet (or six), an adding machine, a pretty sophisticated calculator, and countless other things that used to fill up typical offices 30 years ago. And who is responsible for this? Steve Jobs. He was visionary enough to see that if you make it easy enough to use, people other than weird hobbyists will use it. He was a long haired kid and Gates was saying that he couldn't imagine anyone needing any more than 64k of RAM. But Gates was savvy (not to mention ruthless) enough to see that he was wrong about the command line's dominance, and smart enough to know that while there will always be people who shop at Bergdorf and Saks, way more folks flock to Wal-Mart. He's happy to take that business.

But Jobs is still a visionary and to think that he isn't working on the convergence of media in a convenient, easy to use device is nonsense. Imagine what he's whipping people to imagine, a thing today we have no idea we won't be able to live without three years from now.

Support the troops, send 'em an iPod--and an iTunes gift certificate.

http://anysoldier.com/index.cfm

So listen up Apple this is what I want. A camera/phone with a decent size display so I can read it, buttons that are not too small and bluetooth connectivity to a stereo headphone/microphone. Integrated flash memory iPod music player sharing the phones display. If the phone rings when I'm listening to music I want the music to automatically pause and restart when the call is concluded. I don't want to buy or manage my music using the phone co's slower and expensive network. I want to use my Mac and broadband to acquire and manage music and transfer it to the phone via firewire while the battery charges.

That should do it. Some time before Christmas this year would be ideal.

CC Motorola

Actually, Al, they already make combo headphones that split off into to inputs. One for a cell phone, one for an audio device. Go buy it.

Your idea is neat, except good audio technology and good cell phone technology do not, at this time, nor in the near future, mix. Want a *lot* of GOOD sounding audio files? Get used to the continued use of some form of micro-hard drive; want a good cell phone? Get used to having to pay double or even triple to have a music feature, and to purchase that music. And oh yeah, don't even DREAM of the phone companies deciding to let you import music to your phone for free unless you're good at hacking.

Look around you - the market models can already tell you what things will be like for the next year or so. Companies like money, not inter-operability.

You are not allowed to ever turn on your cell phone (legally) while in flight on a commercial aircraft. However, your ipod is allowed between takeoff and landing.

Unless you can convince the FCC that cell devices will not interfere with pilots, then good luck using the converged device thingamijig you want.

And again, there's already stuff out there that allows you to have your music interrupted by your cell phone.

God, i have no idea why all you people actually want that. When i'm escaping thru music, I'm friggin' ESCAPING. The rest of the chatty world can wait their damn turn.

I looked at those and had concerns about getting the two devices tangled. Maybe I should see if one of my pals has a pair that I can try.

Usually I can feel the phone vibrate when a call comes in, but I was trucking right along didn't detect the vibration and it was set on tone+vibrate.

Quote

metavurt wrote:
Actually, Al, they already make combo headphones that split off into to inputs. One for a cell phone, one for an audio device. Go buy it.

Your idea is neat, except good audio technology and good cell phone technology do not, at this time, nor in the near future, mix. Want a *lot* of GOOD sounding audio files? Get used to the continued use of some form of micro-hard drive; want a good cell phone? Get used to having to pay double or even triple to have a music feature, and to purchase that music. And oh yeah, don't even DREAM of the phone companies deciding to let you import music to your phone for free unless you're good at hacking.

Look around you - the market models can already tell you what things will be like for the next year or so. Companies like money, not inter-operability.

Let's see - the phone companies want me to spend $3 for a tiny snippet of a MIDI for a song, while Apple wants me to spend $.99 for the actual song....

For all of Bill Gates accomplishments, he's still and always will be just a poor hapless dope with no vision playing follow-the-leader to the companies and people who are capable of innovation and creative thought.

Whenever he tries to think for himself and give people his opinion about where technology is going, he says something monumentally stupid, because he has absolutely no clue.

Remember his proposal that it should either cost money to send e-mail, or anyone writting email should have to solve a simple math problem before they can send it? Yeah. There's a man who's hip with the times. Let's not forget that the internet completely took him by surpress, among just about every other advancement in computing.

Cell phones will displace the iPod! Rentals will smash the iTunes Music Store!

I think Bill Gates' biggest failing is his inability to understand what people like and why they like it.

Considering he thinks it's such a short-lived technology, Gates and Microsoft have spent an awful lot of time and effort on trying to compete with iPod via Windows Mobile on things like Creative's big black thing and other devices, and has terrible market share to show for it. He can move from device to device, pushing Windows Mobile on THAT platform, but the real issue is that, as much as they push it, people aren't as excited about Windows as Gates seems to think they are.

Take handhelds/smartphones. Sure, Pocket PC slowly gains in market share, but Palm is still there. More importantly, Microsoft has spent oodles to compete and the more market share they get, the less interesting handhelds have become. No one cares. They are not the hot products they were five years ago.

People don't really LIKE Windows. They buy Windows PCs because they are cheaper, not just for the cost of the machine, but also the money they save on products like Office. Let's face it. We either know people or we ARE the people everyone comes to when they get a new PC because we've got copies of Office and XP, Photoshop/Illustrator, etc, burned onto CD so they can steal that software rather than pay for it. (Not to mention that on a Windows PC, you never have to pay for Porn, because you can use Quickspoof. That, my friends, is the #1 reason NOT to switch to a Mac.)

All technology done right is short-lived. For all the fuss that was created when it was discovered that the iPod batteries could go after 18months, MANY people buy new ones each year anyway. For all the talk from Apple fans of how their fifteen year old Mac still works fine, the average Mac user gets a new Mac every couple years, when their old one works fine. Of course the iPod is not going to be the way it is five years from now. And of course Apple's position is not static. In five years, for all we know, Apple may not be selling music players and may have a much larger share of the PC market because of new developments.

If I remember corrctly, Apple is already working on puting iTunes on your cell phones. MP3 playback his already in cellphones. And this would also allow the iTMS it be on your cellphone. One reason the iPod is called iPod and not iMusic or iPlayer is becasue apple know it will have to evolve. Sure cell phones may take over MP3 players, but I have a good feeling Apple is on top of it.

Cell Phones are too poorly designed to contiue to add more features like music. Today we have cell phones that making a phone call on can be very difficult. Thats the main reason I no longer have one, they just don't work very well and are too expensive to boot.
I was never interested in any mp3 player before the ipod because of poor design as well. The problem with small devices that try to do everything is that they cannot do anything very well.

I know he's the evil genius of Peckerwood, Inc., but he's right about this. The iPod will either become a phone or it will lose 80% of its marketshare in the next 4 years. It's so obvious that I'd bet my left ass cheek that Apple is secretly working on it somewhere in private, with some brilliant angle that nobody has thought of yet.

"People don't really LIKE Windows. They buy Windows PCs because they are cheaper, not just for the cost of the machine, but also the money they save on products like Office."

And also because they're locked into buying Windows because Microsoft spent a lot of time and effort locking developers into creating software for Windows, which they did by creating a monopoly, which they did by unfairly forcing out the competition, which they did by locking vendors into loading Windows on to their computers, which they did through dirty licensing tactics.

If you want to run the majority of programs from the last 15 years, you HAVE to use Windows. Period. Combine that with the insane scarcity of vendors offering non-Windows PCs, and I think you'd have the true reason why so many people use Windows.

"The iPod will either become a phone or it will lose 80% of its marketshare in the next 4 years."

The iPod would lose 80% of its market share in one week if it became a phone.

Cell phones are cell phones. iPods are iPods.

People buy cell phones when they want a cell phone. People buy iPods when they want an iPod.

Cell phones ugly, ackward things with way too many buttons and small, primitive screens that cost way too much to begin with. They have weird arcane carrier rules and will blank out if something disagrees with the signal. People put up with them because they want a portable phone. Not because they want to play music, aside from ring-tones.

iPods are small and nice looking with crisp screens and few buttons, so easy they can be navigated with your eyes closed. They aren't all that expensive. They interface with iTunes. They play music. People like them for all of the above reasons.

Combining the two would make for an even more complicated and expensive cell phone with either way too many buttons, or way too few buttons that have ackward multi-functions. It would most likely have battery life inferior to a normal iPod and a normal cell phone, and almost no one would really be interested.

That's because the only thing an MP3 playing cell phone would have incommon with an iPod is that it plays music, which is only one of many reasons why people like iPods.

As for the advantages it offers cell phone users, there's essentially no difference between it and a midi phone, except for more ackwardness in the interface, which means difficulty using it AS an MP3 player. Then there is of course the fact that MP3 playing cell phones ALREADY exist, and show no signs of popularity.

There is also the fact that keeping your phone and your MP3 seperate means that should one stop working, you will still have the other.

Converging technology has been the "next big thing" for quite awhile, now. People combine TVs with VCRs, the internet with television, MP3 players with cell phones, game consoles with desktop computers. They get called "the next big thing", and then promptly go nowhere, because almost nobody likes actually convergent technology, except for clueless CEOs and marketers.