As a Microsoft’s Windows user, i am very fond of Bill Gates. He is the mastermind behind the immense success of Microsoft as a OS giant. However, being a human, he too has had his share of failures and not so popular predictions. Following is the list top 6 failed technology predictions made by Mr. Gates. Have a look at ‘em :
640Kb of memory will be enough for everyone
640kb of memory, after reading you might be laughing. Well don’t laugh, it is true. In 1981, Bill Gates reportedly said that nobody would ever need more than 640 kilobytes of memory on their personal computer. Contrary to what Gates thought, most computer’s be it laptop or destop, today come with at least 1GB of memory. Imagine, what if his prediction was true and we did stuck with 640kb of memory.
Operating System 2 will be the programme of all time
In a foreword to the OS/2 Programmer’s Guide in 1987 Bill Gates wrote,
I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly programme, of all times.
This Operating System although gained some ground in large industries like banking, insurance and telecommunications it, however, it failed to make an impact among the home and other domestic users. The launch of Windows 95 completely stole the OSes thunder. OS/2 is no longer marketed by IBM, and IBM standard support for OS/2 was discontinued on 31 December 2006. And after that Microsoft’s own XP took over the reigns of 95 and is now installed over a majority of computer’s all over the world.
Spam problem will be over
As promised by Bill Gates in January 2004, the problem of spam e-mail messages will be gone within two years. Clearly the menace of spam is far from getting over instead it has been growing at an immense pace. In fact, spam accounts for 14.5 billion messages globally per day. In other words, spam makes up 45% of all emails.
Microsoft will never make a 32-bit OS
In 1983, Bill Gates said,
The company will never make a 32-bit operating system.
However, nine years later, Microsoft released beta of its first 32 bit Windows NT. NT was the first full 32-bit version of Windows. In 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95, which featured new user interface, supported long file names and could automatically detect and configure installed hardware (plug and play). The OS could natively run 32-bit applications, and featured several technological improvements that increased its stability over Windows 3.1. And again, in 2005, Microsoft released 64-bit versions of Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003, now dubbed Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64. Currently, Microsoft’s most popular XP packs both 32 and 64-bit versions. Less-popular Vista also comes in both versions. And now windows 7 is ready to launch in both versions.
Blu-ray Disc will be the last physical format (media)
In the year 2005, Gates amused the world with one another forecast that failed miserably. In an interview to a newspaper, Gates said
Blu-ray Disc is the last physical format there will ever be.
Here’s what he said in the interview,
Well, the key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-ray is very anti-consumer and there’s not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [movie] studios got too much protection at the expense consumers and it won’t work well on PCs. You won’t be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way. It’s not the physical format that we have the issue with, it’s that the protection scheme on Blu is very anti-consumer. If [the Blu-ray group] would fix that one thing, you know, that’d be fine. For us it’s not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything’s going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it’s even unclear how much this one counts.
Contrary to what he said in the interview, the Blu-Ray has beaten HD-DVD to death, its successor are on way including multi-layer discs (LS-R), 3D discs that may hold up to a terabyte of data and discs read by short wavelengths such as UV.
Tablet PC’s will be most popular
In the year 2001, Bill Gates had said that tablet PC would be the most popular form of PC sold in America. At an event in Las Vegas, Gates showed a prototype Tablet PC and following year launched it. He said,
It’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.
However, Tablet PCs failed to make an impact. Only a few handful vendors market Tablet PCs. Also, they are still to take off as business devices.
Do leave your comments, after reading the above 6 failed tech predictions