Bill Gates: "security guys break the Mac every single day"

I'm all for competition in the marketplace. I'm even for friendly puns between rival competitors and the camps that follow them, especially since you have to have a sense of humor about them in the first place. But don't we also need a sense of reality?

In a Vista-pimping interview with Newsweek yesterday, Bill Gates appears to be taking off the gloves with an all-out attack on the Mac. When questioned about accusations of copying Mac OS X features, Bill began accusing Apple of the exact opposite, and he also postulated that "maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing." While he is of course referring to the 2003 demonstration of Longhorn, this isn't even the half of it. Bill also tried to turn their reputation for swiss-cheese security around on Apple, claiming:

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."

I'm sorry: "Total exploit?" Did anyone else see something from the rear end of a bull just fly over their shoulder? I'm no security fanboy for the Mac, but perhaps Bill got the wrong impression of how (not so) widespread the exploits from MOAB - the Month of Apple Bugs - actually became. Or perhaps he forgot that it's Microsoft who has had to set up regular patch release schedules to help throttle the damage. All things considered, however, I can understand if Bill lost track; regularity can sometimes numb the pain, breeding forgetfulness in the process.

Check out the rest of the, uh... 'interesting' interview for some other great zingers from the big G-man. If you ask me, he sure is shaping up to retire with a bang in 2008.