I really get a kick out of this article. ;o)
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Sunday, February 28, 1999
From The Denver-Rocky Mountain News
If Microsoft built cars
— fables from e-mail
Rob Reuteman
Business Editor
Fact and fiction can be worlds apart or nearly the same. At its best, fiction can reveal
underlying truth in ways not possible with factual constraints.
That in mind, I read an E-mail from a friend last week that’s certainly fake and just as
certainly true. Here’s the story:
At the recent COMDEX computer expo, Bill Gates supposedly made the following comparison
between the computer and auto industries:
"If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be
driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon," Gates said.
In response, General Motors issued the following press release:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the
following characteristics:
•For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
•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 reason, and you would just accept
this, restart, and drive on.
•Occasionally, executing a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to
restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
•Only one person at a time could use the car, unless each person bought “Car95” or
“CarNT.” But then you would have to buy more seats.
•Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast and
twice as easy to drive. But it would only run on 5 percent of the roads.
•The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single
"general car default" warning light.
• The air-bag system would say, “Are you sure?” before going off.
• 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 hold of
the radio antenna.
•GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps
(now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete
this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50 percent or
more.
• Every time GM introduced a new model car, buyers would have to learn how to drive all
over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• You press the “Start” button to shut off the engine.
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Wes
