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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the use-what-works dept.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has revealed he uses an Android-powered smartphone, rather than a Windows one.

"Recently, I actually did switch to an Android phone," he said, speaking on Fox News on Sunday.

Microsoft's own Windows-powered phones have failed to make a significant impact on the smartphone market, which is dominated by devices running Google's Android operating system.

However, Mr Gates said he had installed lots of Microsoft apps on his phone.

When asked whether he also had an iPhone, perhaps as a secondary device, he replied: "No, no iPhone."

He did not reveal which particular smartphone he currently uses.

Beware the chef who won't eat his own cooking.

Also at VentureBeat and CNET


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:13AM (7 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:13AM (#573617) Journal

    Maybe next we'll find he's using Linux as his desktop?

    I used to wonder if the richest man in the world had to put up with the same forced rebooting crap I did when I used windows: richest man surfing the web and IE crashes. Trying to get work done, just about to save and.... Forced reboot, lost everything.

    Doing a presentation and BSOD!
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2162027/Microsofts-Surface-tablet-crashes-stage--repeat-Bill-Gates-Windows-98-blue-screen-death-moment.html [dailymail.co.uk]

    Maybe shoulda switched earlier....

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:01AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:01AM (#573636) Journal

    Maybe next we'll find he's using Linux as his desktop?

    But of course he does! Why would a rational being refuse to use the best thing available?
    He can even play XBill [wikipedia.org]

    (grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:58AM (#573718)

      Yes, but will it compile to Altair Basic 1975?

  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:53AM (4 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:53AM (#573703) Homepage

    I think it's pretty clear that none of the tech leaders actually eat their own dogfood, or things would be very different.

    When you're a billionaire with a thousand developers at your beck and call and a guy who can "just fix that for you" in seconds under penalty of losing his job, you lose track of the reality and the end-user in the process.

    I can't imagine that Bill Gates has stuck a Windows CD in a computer in decades, gone through the first-user dialogs, or ever tried to network it and manage it en-masse.

    You think Zuckerberg sits there browsing his Facebook and constantly having to click "NO, SERIOUSLY, GO AWAY" to the enforced Top-Stories weather report, no matter how many times he turns it off or changes it to Most Recent? Managing his privacy settings for decades of photos with no decent tools to do so? Handling blocking of individuals? Like hell, because if he did, he'd make them roll out a change to stop that shite.

    At best, those kinds of people have a system managed by others who remove that stuff especially for them and they never see a real user product interaction.

    If I were a CEO of something like that, I'd be signing up via VPN, going through the download and install experience, writing out a list of quirks, bugs, problems, and just things that look poorly-thought-out, and I'd do it regularly, anonymously, and under a variety of guises (companies with enterprise software, personal users who just bought a laptop in PC World, etc.) and feed back to the developers.

    The fact that nothing changes in that regard tells me that they don't do that, or don't care because it doesn't actually affect them.

    You really think that Bill Gates sat there with all the IE-as-default shite that constantly re-inserted itself after you chose a browser already, on every Windows Update? Like hell did he.

    Hell, NOBODY at Microsoft was even aware that the required browser-choice etc. that they were forced to insert into Windows on the order of the EU courts didn't actually take effect on clean installs as required by the courts. Literally nobody, not even the lawyers, sat and bothered to check that it did what it was supposed to do. They were fined for that in court. It was only realised YEARS after it was supposed to be happening by default.

    • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:55PM (2 children)

      by Nuke (3162) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:55PM (#573767)

      I can't imagine that Bill Gates has stuck a Windows CD in a computer in decades, gone through the first-user dialogs, or ever tried to network it and manage it en-masse. .... You really think that Bill Gates sat there with all the IE-as-default shite that constantly re-inserted itself after you chose a browser already, on every Windows Update? Like hell did he.

      I agree that these days he most likely never installs Windows, hardware drivers, or sets up a network. However, surely he still uses Windows (10), IE, and all the associated MS apps. So he would still have to suffer the crap that gets thrown at every other Windows user, unless he has a rotating desk so if the one he is using starts "upgrading" he swings it round to continue with one that is not. I'd like to be a fly-on-the-wall in his office or study. Or maybe his (and other senior MS staff) version of Windows has a special code in it that deflects the crap.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:35AM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:35AM (#574155) Journal

        I agree that these days he most likely never installs Windows, hardware drivers, or sets up a network. However, surely he still uses Windows (10), IE, and all the associated MS apps. So he would still have to suffer the crap that gets thrown at every other Windows user, unless he has a rotating desk so if the one he is using starts "upgrading" he swings it round to continue with one that is not. I'd like to be a fly-on-the-wall in his office or study. Or maybe his (and other senior MS staff) version of Windows has a special code in it that deflects the crap.

        I wouldn't be surprised if it's managed like a corporate install. I never really get surprise updates on my work PC, I get a popup in the middle of the week that says there's going to be an update on Friday that might require a reboot. And he'd get those scheduled exactly when he wants them. Even Clinton's got a home email server so Gates surely has a rack or two, and he'd have someone on the payroll to manage all of it.

        Also keep in mind that he's not buying $600 laptops...I'm sure it's nothing but top tier hardware that gets replaced every year or two. So the updates and whatever else ought to be pretty fast. And he's got plenty of cycles to waste running bloated software. He's running around managing his foundation and stuff, probably rarely uses anything more intensive than Office, and he's likely throwing tens of thousands of dollars of hardware at his word processor. I'm sure it runs just fine without needing any special secret codes.

        And worst case...the guy can go make a cup of coffee while the PC reboots. He doesn't have deadlines. He's not working on someone else's schedule. Even if he's in the middle of a meeting and he goes "Oh, gotta wait ten minutes for this thing to reboot" everyone around just smiles and says "Sure thing, Bill!" and chats for a bit. I can't think of any reason Bill Gates would ever be in a rush. Whatever it is, he's got someone else whose job is worrying about that so he doesn't have to.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:39AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:39AM (#574162)

          Even Clinton's got a home email server so Gates surely has a rack or two

          No, Clinton's the one with a rack...

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:22PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @03:22PM (#573837) Journal

      I think it's pretty clear that none of the tech leaders actually eat their own dogfood, or things would be very different.

      Steve Jobs always did. NeXT was created as a company to build the computer that Steve Jobs wanted to use, and to amortise the cost of this by selling a few of them to other people. This persisted after he came back to Apple. It has advantages and disadvantages. The plus side was that Mac UIs were always very efficient when you wanted to do the same things that Steve Jobs did. The downside was that use cases that Steve Jobs didn't have were considered vastly less important, even if they were requirements that 90% of Apple customers had.

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      sudo mod me up