Ian Morris
Ian Morris loves televisions so much he's been banned from wedding chapels in Las Vegas for trying to marry them. When he's not romancing technology, he can be found watching American TV. Ian likes roast potatoes, but he doesn't like digital rights management.
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Wednesday 9 January 2008, 6:19pm
Bye bye, Bill
There are many people in the world who don't like Microsoft. You could hardly argue that it has made some mistakes over the years. But as Bill Gates prepares to bow out of running Microsoft -- a company he's grown into one of the biggest in the world -- I can't help thinking we're going to be worse off without him.
Bill doesn't have the presentation skills that his brother-from- another-mother Steve Jobs has, but I can't help but like him. Unlike Steve, he doesn't fish for applause, which is easy to do at an Apple keynote. The people there are so hyped by the time Steve arrives on stage, I'm amazed some of them don't actually explode after his first word or two. No, Bill is a different man. He's basically a geek, and he makes very little effort to conceal that fact.
You can argue that Microsoft is an evil company if you like. Personally, I think it does a lot of good things. Sure, it might 'borrow' some ideas from Apple and the open-source community, but it still makes products that billions of people worldwide use every single day.
Microsoft won't be the same when Gates finally steps down and I think the tech world will be a poorer place in his absence. So tonight, when I'm having a drink at the bar and playing video blackjack, I'll raise my glass to Bill.
If you want a good laugh, watch Bill's full length video sketch about his last day. I laughed out loud.
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