Todd Bishop recently sat down for a little chat with Bill about—what else?—the launch of Vista.

Q: Reviewers and Apple have pointed out the similarities between Windows Vista and Mac OS X, and questioned Microsoft’s level of innovation based on that. How do you respond to that?

Gates: Well, there’s a lot of innovation that’s unique to this operating system, whether it’s being the first on parental controls…

Gates: …or, you know, we are way better on security than any other system out there.

Q: You really believe that?

Gates: Oh, absolutely.

Q: Because a lot of people would challenge you on that.

Gates: No, no serious security researcher would challenge that.

That said, I won’t deny Gates’s assertion that Vista does feature some worthwhile innovations. (ReadyBoost comes to mind.) I just find it kind of funny that the “innovations” he trots out again and again in interviews are the ones that have already been in Mac OS X.

As for his continued insistence on Vista’s security superiority, well… it’s already been covered elsewhere.