THIS IS WHAT WE CALL "WISHFUL THINKING"

While we're sure that the iPod's day will, like all things, pass, we're more than a little amused by Bill Gates' blustering and slightly desperate reading of the death notices for his great rival's little baby. (Okay, the great rival which he owns a slice of):

"I don't think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be. think you can draw parallels here with the computer — here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position."

Of course, Bill doesn't really have much luck predicting what will happen in the computing industry (WebTV?), which is why he has to wait to see what is happening and then pump millions into exploiting his near-monopoly to try and catch up, but surely he must be able to check his computer history? The Mac never did lead the market, and certainly never by such an extraordinary distance as the iPod has at the moment. Gates seems to be hoping that mobile phones will kill the iPod - and double hoping it'll be phones with some sort of shrunk down Windows as an OS - and in the longterm, he might be right. But just as people have been reluctant to replace their TV and computers with a single screen, it's going to take a massive fast-forward in technology before a phone which can also do what the iPod does is available in anything like a usable format. If Gates wants to dance on the grave of the iPod, he's going to have a bit of a wait.

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