A touching farewell
The Bill Gates lap of honour reached the Wall Street Journal yesterday, in the form of its impressively attended D6 conference.
He and Steve Ballmer demonstrated how a touch-screen technology called Multi-touch will manifest itself in Windows 7, the next iteration of its operating system, which Microsoft has kept very tight-lipped about until now.
Initial impressions of Windows 7 and the Multi-touch interface are very Apple-like. However, where Apple has been the pioneer in the next generation of touch-screen technology in hand held devices, maybe Microsoft might beat it on larger screens.
Here’s a video of the demo shown at the D6 interview
There was also a general Q&A session with Gates and Ballmer. Here are some choice bullet points from the transcript.
- Gates: “Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete.”
- Walt jumps in and asks about the percentage of Vista sales that result in downgrades to XP. Ballmer dodges. Gates looking a little depressed.
- Windows 7 is apparently months away, due late in 2009.
