At Microsoft's annual gathering of financial analysts in Seattle last week, company chief Bill Gates took a swipe at Apple's multicolored iMac packaging strategy in the course of a discussion of various Intel-based devices.
"The one thing Apple's providing now is leadership in colors," Gates said as he pointed out a red-colored Intel-based personal computer on display. "It won't take long for us to catch up with that, I don't think."
Apple has rebounded from the fiscal woes that prompted the Microsoft investment two years ago, announced at Apple's Macworld Expo industry trade show amid a smattering of boos.
While Microsoft did announce new software at last week's Macworld in New York, the company for the first time since the August 1997 investment didn't have a representative on stage during interim CEO Steve Jobs's keynote address. The speech focused primarily on new notebook versions of the high-flying iMac line of machines.