Microsoft Is Developing a Kitchen Client? I Thought Gordon Ramsay Hosted 'Hell's Kitchen,' Not Bill Gates.

Apparently, I missed the chapter on Ma Gates’s Favorite Recipes in “The Road Ahead”–Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’s 1995 book on the personal-computing revolution, because Microsoft is reportedly hard at work on a version of the Windows operating system for the kitchen. Sources close to the company say it’s developing a “Kitchen Client” software that will transform our lowly analog sculleries into full-blown computing environments.

It’s worth noting here that Microsoft’s initiative is not the first of its kind. Back in 1969, Honeywell launched the “Kitchen Computer”–essentially a $10,000 recipe holder marketed under the tag line “If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute.” The device was an enormous failure–it’s not known for sure if Honeywell ever managed to sell even one. Presumably, Microsoft’s offering will be a bit better at marketing, as long as it’s not undersold by a competing Open Sauce client …