If Microsoft Built Cars

Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure the accomplishments of Microsoft against General Motors.

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His comparison went like this: If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour, or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to the gallon. In either case, the sticker price of the new car would be under $50.

In response to all this goading, GM responded: Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that exhibits the following tendencies:

  1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
  2. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no apparent reason, and you would have to restart it. For some strange reason, you would just accept this and drive on.
  3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you would have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you would just accept this, too.
  4. Your car could only have one passenger at a time, unless you bought a “CAR 95” or a “Car NT”. But then you’d have to buy more seats.
  5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as fast and twice as easy to drive–but it would run on only five percent of the roads.
  6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much more slowly.
  7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights on the Microsoft car would be replaced by a single, “general car fault” warning light.
  8. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.
  9. The air bag system would say, “Are you sure?” before deploying in an emergency.
  10. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

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