If you were alive (and online) during the 90s, you may remember the banter between Microsoft and General Motors:
From https://crysa.fzu.cz/ondra/documents/cars_like_windows.html (the only online copy I could find)
Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five-dollar cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
[…]
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The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car error” warning light.
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New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
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The airbag system would ask “Are You Sure?” before going off.
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Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed a hold of the radio antenna.
30 years later, some of those jokes are finally becoming reality, thanks to Tesla.
The Macintosh one is wild
“6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5 percent of the roads."
Love the scene from the Steve Jobs movie where Woz asks Steve if in order to send an email on the NEXT computer the recipient would also need to have an NEXT computer.
Of course!
Basically iMessaging and FaceTime.
Blows my mind that literally every other brand of phone has settled on a standard for rich messaging and video calls, but Apple had to make a big stink about it and pinky-promise it’ll be out this year.
And all the Apple users act like everybody else is inferior…while they’re the only ones that are incompatible.
I bought an iPhone 12 specifically because I was tired of potato-grams between my wife and I. I switched back to Android a couple weeks ago on that pinky-promise.
Among several other Apple-isms, this one blows my mind then most.
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