In an effort to express the accomplishments of Microsoft in understandable terms, Bill Gates made the following comparison with General Motors products:
He said, " 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 V8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles/hour(160,000 km/hr). Or
You could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to the gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker of the new car would be less than $50.00. "
--- End of statement.
GM responded by pointing out that, if GM built cars that operated like Microsoft products:
- You’d have a car that crashes 4 times a day.
- Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
- Your car would constantly die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this as a normal part of operations and drive on.
- Your car would also stop and fail to restart, and you’d have to reinstall the engine.
- For some strange reason, you’d just accept this, too.
- You could only have one person in the car at a time unless you bought a Car95 or a CarNT. But then you’d have to buy more seats. (Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as fast, twice as easy to drive-but would only run on 5 percent of the roads. Macintosh car owners could get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.)
- To continue, the oil, engine, gas, and alternator warning lights would all be combined into a single " General Auto Protection Fault " warning light that, when lit, would oblige you to stop your car in the middle of the highway and restart it.
- New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
- If you were involved in a crash, you would never be able to determine the real cause of the crash.
- Finally, the airbag system would ask you to press an " Are you sure? " button before deploying.