Gates Worries That Jobs’ Kids Won’t Be Able to Watch Finding Nemo On Road Trips

Sep 7, 2004 (financialwire.net via COMTEX) — (FinancialWire) “I guess Steve’s kids just listen to Bach and Mozart,” McGraw-Hill’s (NYSE: MHP) Businessweek quotes Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bill Gates when asked why his company is making handheld gadgets that play video as well as music, while Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) has so far spurned the idea to stick with its music iPods.

”We don’t think people have a burning desire to watch video on tiny little screens,” Apple’s Steve Jobs, a longtime Gates nemesis, was quoted as saying earlier. Gates retorted that his kids “want to watch Finding Nemo,” which of course was made by Jobs’ [Pixar] Animation Studios (NASDAQ: PIXR).

”I don’t know who made that, but it’s a really neat movie,” Gates was said to have quipped.

The asides were made in conjunction with Microsoft’s launch of the company’s new portable video players, made for it by Samsung and others. The device will also allow its users to purchase and manage music with its Windows Media Player.

Gates was quoted as saying that there is nothing that the iPod does that makes him stop to say, “Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that.”

Businessweek said that while the current revenues from all this are miniscule compared to its $36.8 billion annual turnover, the company is “wrestling with questions about maturity as its growth slows.”

While the iPod is becoming a cultural icon, perhaps Gates as well as Jobs are mindful of the popularity of the original ””Osborne” portable computer that is now probably somewhere in the Smithsonian.

Businessweek said the “new technologies are also key to Microsoft’s march into the living room. If consumers get used to Windows Media Player and the portable video and audio players, they’re more likely to use the company’s technology as they shuttle digital content around their homes. Wide customer acceptance may help Microsoft persuade record labels and movie studios to wrap their music and video in its software. The idea is that the cycle could feed on itself, making Microsoft’s media technology as ubiquitous as its Windows monopoly.”

”You don’t have anybody investing more in bringing these consumer scenarios together,” the magazine quotes Gates. “Media today is so far short of what it can be.”

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Pariah Burke writes the Design Weblog and Magazine Design Weblog for Weblogs, Inc., and is a contributing writer to the Unofficial Apple Weblog and Unofficial Microsoft Weblog.