In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr Welch himself):
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new
car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would
just accept this, restart and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car
to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall
the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or
"CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times
as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the
roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a
single "general car default" warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you cut and
refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the
key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand
McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need
them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause
the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would
become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to
drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same
manner as the old car.
13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.