BNET asked Apple’s Steve Jobs arch rival Bill Gates about the iPad…his remarks were somewhat comical to me anyway.

Gates told Brent Schlender, “You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that,” he said. “So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”

Familiar? It was Gates who herlded the awesomeness of the tablet long ago, and it didn’t take off as he had wanted. Here we are how many years later? And he’s still insisting that a stylus and keyboard must be a part of a successful…netbook.

Again, right back to a netbook. Maybe that’s ok. It’s all well and good, because the crystal ball doesn’t even have a clue about what’s going to happen with the iPad, Kindle, Nook, or the now unveiled iTablet. We can look at what the naysayers said about the iPod or the iPhone. History is already repeating itself.

Posted by Christian Messer on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 8:35 pm.