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History Will Revere Bill Gates and Forget Steve Jobs, Says Author
Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that journalist Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, has stirred up quite a controversy in tech circles with his off-the-cuff remarks that history will remember Bill Gates fondly while Steve Jobs slips into obscurity. Gladwell likened Gates' charitable work to the German armaments maker Oskar Schindler's famous efforts to save his Jewish workers from the gas chambers during World War II, and added that because of Gates there's a reasonable shot we will cure malaria. 'Gates, sure, is the most ruthless capitalist. And then he decides, he wakes up one morning and he says, "Enough." And he steps down, he takes his money, takes it off the table ... and I think, I firmly believe that 50 years from now, he will be remembered for his charitable work,' said Gladwell. 'And of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. Who's Steve Jobs again?' For all his dismissal of Jobs' legacy, however, Gladwell remains utterly fascinated with him. 'He was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen,' said Gladwell. 'What was brilliant about Apple, he understood from the get-go that the key to success in that marketplace was creating a distinctive and powerful and seductive brand.' Gladwell concludes that the most extraordinary moment in the biography of Jobs is when Jobs is on his deathbed and it's over and he knows it. 'And on, I forget, three, four occasions, he refuses the mask because he is unhappy with its design. That's who he was. Right to the very end, he had a set of standards. If he was going to die, dammit, he's going to die with the right kind of oxygen mask. To him it was like making him send his final emails using Windows.'"
that there is a Gates Foundation that might pay Gladwell, and there isn't a Jobs foundation that might.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
There was nothing wrong with giving people a decent car to drive. So what if it is not god's gift to mankind.
You can't make a car analogy here, because it would be retarded. The problem with Windows has always been that Microsoft abused their position. They abused their position as an OS vendor by tweaking products to be less interoperable with their competitors' software. They abused their thus-gained monopoly position through all manner of anticompetitive practice. This resulted not only in a dearth of customer choice (necessary for a healthy marketplace) but also in actual negative financial impact to human beings.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Microsoft products, but the biggest reason not to pay for them is that the money will just be used to fuck the industry some more — and thus, all the users.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nice astroturfing there again, drinkypoo. Everyone knows that nobody actually uses Google+.
Ah yes, now you have two comments. Congratulations.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sorry, I didn't catch it. Too busy playing with my iPhone.
I don't know why we keep talking about Bill Gates being a philanthropist. Bill is a sociopath that gets a kick out of stealing from all of us and making money in the most cutthroat ways possible.
Melinda Gates is the soul that Bill doesn't have, and she is the one that does the philanthropic work, with Bill's money.
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