Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure the accomplishments of Microsoft against General Motors.
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:
- Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much more slowly.
- The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights on the Microsoft car would be replaced by a single, “general car fault” warning light.
- New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.
- The air bag system would say, “Are you sure?” before deploying in an emergency.
- If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
