Gates: Apple has done 'a fantastic job' with music

In an interview on Tuesday with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates was asked while at the company's Professional Developers Conference about competition from the likes of Google and Apple.  Yup, he said, Microsoft has competitors out there that do some things better than his company. But that doesn't mean Microsoft won't catch up and pass those same competitors.

"At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something," Gates said in the interview.  "...Nokia is way ahead of us in phones; we're closing the gap. Sony is ahead of us in video games.... In Web search, Google is the far-away leader. Big honeymoon for them.... And Apple in music has done a fantastic job.

"...In those areas where somebody else has done well, that's great. We'll match what they do, we'll bring new things to it, do it better and integrate it in with other things...."

Methinks Gates damns with faint praise. While it's true that Apple has indeed done very well with the music-computer-digital lifestyle convergence (how many iPods do you have?), I'm tempted to argue that Gates forgot the most important one: the operating system.