Date Received: Tue, 7 Apr 1998
At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer
industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology
like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars
that got 1000 mi/gal. "
Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement
"Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"
- Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy
a new car.
- Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you
would just accept this, restart and drive on.
- Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and
fail and you would have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you
would accept this too.
- You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you
bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would have to buy more seats.
- Apple would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable,
five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5% of the
roads.
- The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to
their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
- The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a
single "general fault" warning light.
- New seats would force everyone to have the same size butts.
- The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.
- If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what
happened.