Somewhat lost in the commotion of Microsoft appointing Satya Nadella as CEO was the fact that Bill Gates is coming back.
Gates will spend about a third of his time working at Microsoft. He's a technical advisor to Nadella, and will help with future product direction.
It's a fairly big deal that Gates is going to be involved with Microsoft. For years people have wanted Gates to come back to the company.
There is a concern though that Gates has been out of the technology industry for so long that he won't be able to cope with the changes that have come as Android and iOS have altered computing.
Gates was recently on Jimmy Fallon's show, and was asked about the future of computing. The answer isn't super illuminating, but considering that he's now helping to shape the future of Microsoft's products, it's worth watching.
At the 1:00 mark in this video, Gates lays out his vision.
He says computers will be more intelligent. They will see more, hear more, and just generally be more pervasive. He also thinks we're going to be using a bunch of devices and the key is to make it easy to move from device to device. He thinks that idea of working at one computer with one keyboard and one screen is going away.
This sounds good for the future of Microsoft's software.
But then, he takes a somewhat odd turn talking about how important handwriting recognition will be for the future of tablets. We're not so sure about that one.