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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
The problem is twofold. First of all, sending an email using Windows is actually better than using a Mac, which treats email like some archaic throwback to the dark ages.
The second is that Jobs hatred of Windows was as much a blessing as it was a curse. There was nothing wrong with giving people a decent car to drive. So what if it is not god's gift to mankind. It is amazing that Steve did what he did but it was driven by his perception of what is better. Ultimately both were businessmen who did well. One left to focus on something else. Both will be dead. Both will be remembered. And it's unlikely that either will fade.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I was just discussing this on G+ where it was claimed that Billy boy has wiped out Polio in the third world. To which I said, Uh, No.
Bill Gates has temporarily suppressed Polio in certain parts of the third world and helped sell it out in the process. In order to get vaccinations you have to provide strong IP protection to Big Pharma. So strong that if your people are dying and you make the medication to save them instead of buying it because you can't afford it that the WTO will end up owning your asshole. Meanwhile, they're not going to get into every nation, which is what it actually takes to eradicate a disease. Instead they are lending a false sense of security while creating a ticking time bomb.
Meanwhile, the foundation makes for-profit investments in industries literally killing the people they are vaccinating. When caught in this they first announced that they would review their investments for ethics; the next day they took down that press release and put up another one saying that they would not be reviewing their investments' ethical nature because it would be difficult and expensive.
The Gates Foundation is not and never has been about improving the world. The money that went into its foundation belongs, by rights, to the American people, because Microsoft was found to have illegally abused its monopoly position by the USDoJ, which had a profound effect on essentially every player in the computing industry. However, Bush's dog Ashcroft announced that there would be zero repercussions, and the Gates foundation was founded, and now does the work of Big Pharma and the WTO.
And of course, let us not forget that Gates is personally, massively invested in pharma; the operation of a nonprofit which was created with illicitly-gained money and which exists to spread the laws desired by Big Pharma is therefore a clear conflict of interest. You may start with the LA Times article "Dark Cloud over Good Works of Gates Foundation" and perform your research from there. Bill Gates has never done anything for the benefit of mankind. If you fell for the Gates Foundation, you need a course in critical thinking in the worst way.
Anyone who believes that Bill Gates is trying to save the world probably also believed that Larry Ellison just wanted to reduce crime in the USA when he was backing that unified national ID program, too.ï
(quick comment since I was JUST talking about this and just had to do a bit of edit and reformat, not an appropriated copypasta.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Malcolm Gladwell will have sunk into obscurity long before either of those guys.
Perhaps it is because the Bradbury quote about "why 451" is fresh in my mind? I take from this that the author is saying, don't forget this guy. Describing a future he sees, and does not like? Gates may in the end get the "better man" historian vote, if this requires some recognition of others, some societal requirement. Some discovery of the world around him. Jobs was an almost mythical, legendary, individual force of nature.
In the same way that everyone remember Columbus, but no one remembers his financial supporters, I don't think Gates will be remembered for curing malaria or whatever else he gives money too.
Leading a successful company just isn't interesting enough for you to be remembered for hundreds of years.
Not in the DRC. A friend of mine is a producer for National Geographic, and they've just finished filming a documentary there. Those mosquito nets that Gates is paying to have distributed? Most people use them...as nets to catch fish. This is one of the big problems with non-profit groups. They often seem to be more focused on how hard they are trying than about how effective their actions really are.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
He's right - Gates probably will be remembered fondly in time. Gates is using his vast fortune to do a lot of good things now and it will make an already-memorable man more so.
He is, however, entirely wrong that Jobs will be forgotten. Jobs is, simply put, the most successful CEO in history. I don't think that can even vaguely be debated (at least not intelligently). Some could even argue that his success as a CEO makes him also the most successful _leader_ of all time. Of course, some will argue against that theory. Regardless of your thoughts on it, however, you will be discussing him and thus he will not be forgotten, at least not for many, many generations.
And, no, I didn't read the article - I refuse to read any article that so obviously utilizes inane controversy to generate page views and bump of ad revenue.
Gates like Rockefeller, and Jobs like Ford. And I suspect each would be content with that.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Obviously they will both end up in textbooks. Jobs for his marketing and design probably, and gates because he started the company that dominated the OS marketplace for years.
because of Gates there's a reasonable shot we will cure malaria.
I guess I'm just totally jaded at times but I figure this will end up not working once the anti-vax nuts rear their heads. (You know, like how they supposedly had polio on its last legs and oh crap the anti-vaxers showed up and it got back out.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The butthurt is very strong in this thread. It's as if a million poor, virgin nerds cried out all at once and nobody cared.
imho Jobs shed his hippy roots and became not just a ruthless capitalist himself but made Apple pretty imperialistic - yes we all know the complete control over hardware and software was a pro vs. con of apples over PCs but apple pushed the line into making some consumer choices not just with the app store but what was "allowed" on the platform itself. I found it shocking that even though we all know Microsoft does little things in Windows to give its app layer products the edge over its competitors compatibility was always there, one way or another....in my eyes Jobs was a ruthless dictator and the Microsoft counterparts were like modern democracy (if you pay, anyone can play)
will work for dragon quest localization
In some sense, the OP is right. We can see it now that there isn't much in the way of real innovation coming down the pipe since the death of Jobs. It seems that Jobs himself was the driving force for the company. I don't expect much more in the way of SIRI and sadly it will be a case of falling into pace with other PC and phone company developments, never really breaking new ground.
unless you're a serious mass murderer to the point of genocide or at least millions have died in your name, you'd have to be some kind of truly enlightened figure to last at least one Thousand years so from my unique pov down here i'm afraid neither of them will last long enough to call it history tell me who's von neumann?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I read Gladwell's book Outliers a few months back. I thought he made some reasonable, if somewhat obvious points, until he went completely off the rails when he discussed differences in math schooling between China and the US.
In short, he said that the way chinese count gives them an edge in learning calculus, because the chinese say the number 13 as "three and ten", building the number out of simpler, more fundamental numbers, whereas in the US children must learn an entirely new word: "thirteen". He ignored how studying calculus concepts like differentials and integrals at a young age (I think around junior high age) is the norm in China, whereas in the US, students only get a watered-down "pre-calc" in their senior year of high school unless they're really ambitious and they take AP classes in their later teens.
There's an excellent review of Outliers that was published in The New Republic available here, for those with a lugubrious interest in learning precisely why we should ignore Gladwell.
50 years from now
50 years from destruction of Microsoft, not from now.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Gates Foundation exists solely to whitewash his reputation for the history books. Gates is nothing more than a latter-day robber-baron. The ruthless tactics he used to line his pockets and squelch any perceived threat to Windows set computing progress back decades.
It sickens me how everyone seems to conveniently forget that, and lines up to kiss his ass because he decided to take the ill-gotten gains amassed via twenty years of unscrupulous business practices and buy respectability for himself.
~Philly
More and more I'm seeing users here toss around allegations of "astroturfing" or "shilling" any time anybody says something that isn't completely negative about Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Oracle, or Facebook, or Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or basically any other prominent company or individual.
Worst of all, this is done without providing any sort of evidence that astroturfing actually is taking place. The age of an account and the number of comments posted using it in the past are not evidence, by the way.
Martin Espinoza, please present some real evidence to show that this is indeed a case of astroturfing. At the very least, you'll need to prove that the "DemomanDeveloper" was in contact with a representative or representatives of Microsoft and/or Bill Gates, that an agreement was put in place for "DemomanDeveloper" to fake support for Gates, that consideration (financial or otherwise) was involved, and that Slashdot comment 40273599 was intentionally posted to fulfill the obligations of this agreement. I await your evidence.
Save the accusations of "astroturfing" and "shilling" for when such incidents can provably be shown to have happened. Otherwise, learn to accept that some people may have opinions that differ from yours, and that just because they support Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook, or Apple, or whoever, it does not mean that they are "astroturfing".
It really degrades the conversation here, Martin Espinoza, when people like you are tossing around "astroturfing" accusations and allegations day-in and day-out, with no evidence or proof of any kind. I'd expect that over at Digg or reddit, but not here.
I always get lost with these references to ancient history.
Bill Gates has had impact on people way beyond the realm of consumer technology and Steve Jobs did not.
One took his money and looked around to see what needed to be done, the other sold a whole bunch of shiny shit to people who (mostly) couldn't afford it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You need to get a grip on reality since you clearly don't know the history behind your god, Steve Jobs. First off, Steve Jobs didn't do much good, and, in the event he did and I'm just consciously ignoring it, he was able to do so only because he acted ruthlessly and atrociously at very opportune times doing much evil at the expense of others (see this article about Gil Amelio. Second, Steve Jobs treated most of the underlings he worked with like absolute shit, especially the designers and developers who actually did work, and not just directed, and the same really can't be said for Bill Gates, who was one of the more gentle CEOs the industry has ever seen.
Actually, looking at your slashdot handle, Whiney Mac Fanboy, I'm really not surprised. Fanboy, indeed.
The author is not really saying that Bill Gates will be known for Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures. Yes, his software were extremely flawed. Yes, he contributed greatly to the nightmare that is the Intellectual Property system of the U.S. But all of that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because Bill bought a "Get out of Jail" card with the Gates foundation. The ignorant masses will remember him as they remember Alfred Nobel. Ask the average idiot (defined as non-Slashdot reader) what they know about Nobel and they will immediately say "Peace Prize". The average idiot will not know about his relation to the development of dynamite and other explosives, his production of armaments, or even the death of his brother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel
I see both being forgotten eventually.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm completely convinced that Gladwell is wrong -- but there is one factor which might theoretically play to Gladwell's advantage, in a small way. Bill Gates left us the legacy of Windows, and is currently trying desperately to redeem himself for that pain, through his philanthropic works. Steve Jobs left us with MacOS and iOS -- but in contrast to Gates, Jobs also left us with a company filled with people who are constantly trying to live up to Jobs' legacy. So here's the factor: If Jobs can ever be seen as "forgettable" fifty years from now, it will have nothing whatsoever to do with Gates; it'll most likely be attributable to Apple post-Jobs having successes which eclipse those of Apple with Jobs. Because this will prove that Apple can actually continue to succeed without Jobs.
So, in my opinion, the one factor which might genuinely make us forget him, is also the one factor which will cement his legacy in the annuls of history.
I think Microsoft employees are above such stuff. There is plenty of cheap Indian labour to work for their PR astroturfing companies. (Note that the GPP post is not only an account specially created for the job, but the English is poor.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
We ARE in the dark ages of technology, you moron!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Jobs was just another greedy fuck selling snakeoil who didn't ascend in Maslows pyramid of needs, whilst Gates has, to the point what it is important for him to save the world.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
For a real world example though, the biggest medical charity in the world is possibly the Wellcome Trust. Its single biggest achievement is, in effect, preventing Venter from patenting the human genome and thus keeping almost all modern medical research open. How many people know or care who founded it?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I don't want to godwin this, but it isn't just nice people that are remembered in history.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I suspect that Gates will be remembered more as a foundation than as a person. I'm not sure how Bill Gates the person will be remembered by history.
You know how a pizza is flat and has round edges? He invented that.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Too many hours listening to the sound of his own imagination. Utterly, amusing and sad to watch a professional advance his own brand on the grave of legends
Look him up. He promoted some very similar ideas in a pre-computer era. Surprisingly to you perhaps, the answer is probably yes.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Look at some of the guys history remembers. Thomas Edison? Henry Ford? We don't remember Henry Ford because of the Ford Foundation either. Gladwell seems to think the historical fame of entrepreneurs is based mainly on their charity. Why? Jobs will be remembered not just because he guided Apple to be the most capitalized company ever, but because he was a "character" while doing so. The black sweater and tennis shoes, the hippie past, the dickish behavior behind closed doors, the fact that he was fired then brought back, etc.
Thing is : you have no clue what philanthropic work has been done by Jobs.
True, but it's irrelevant: I think that the premise of the original article is flawed - people are not remembered for the philanthropy. Look at Edison and Tesla. I've no clue whether either of them were philanthropists but they get remembered because we still use the gadgets they invented. If 100 years from now we are still using desktops and tablets in some form we'll remember the pioneers who originally "invented" them (yes I know Gates/Jobs did not invent the original gadgets but Edison did not invent, or even improve, the light bulb - he just marketed it well).
In this regard Jobs has a far better shot at history because he "invented" far more gadgets than Gates. Gates gave us a desktop OS but Jobs has given us tablets, smart phones, digital music players etc. plus a desktop OS. Ultimately though it will depend on what we are using 100 years from now.
Steve Who?
Agree. Apple continuing to exist half a century from now will be Jobs's greatest legacy. I'm sure better communication devices than the iPhone will be invented and sold as the next must-have gadget. But imagine if in the future, Apple is still around and selling the iDroid and people are riding iRockets to the moon while having their iBrains serviced. What better way to remember Jobs than having products that still follow his naming convention?
50 years from now, there will be a chapter, or at least a paragraph, of Jobs' handiwork in an industrial design textbook (or eBook). No one will care what Gates did because the environmental condition that permitted his tactics -- closed-source, closed file-format, vendor lock-in, intentional incompatibility with competitors -- will never exist again.
Hard to say. Was Jobs on par with Loewy? Goertz? I doubt it. Apple has some nice designs, but the jury is still out if Job's was as influential as some of the great industrial designers. In addition, much wasn't really his work. He was a genius, but that alone is not enough to remain in textbooks as other than a foot note.
No matter what happens to the software model in the future, Gates will be remembered, rightly or wrongly, as leading the computer revolution by taking it from the hobbyist era to what it is today.
Do they both deserve to be remembered? Sure, but history has a short memory.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Is this the same guy who keeps insisting that Windows Mobile will be the dominant phone OS by 2016?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
If it weren't for Jobs, we'd still be running our PCs off the DOS control line (or maybe IBM OS-2.x).
I think you're forgetting about Linux.. You fanboys really are deluded. Steve Jobs is easily the most overrated individual of all time.
Sometimes I actually think that you fanboys believe Steve Jobs was Jesus Christ reincarnated or something.
That has to be the most offensive thing I have ever read.
And to do the work for the WTO to push copyright and IP laws into other countries before the pharmaceutical and entertainment industry close in.
I'm pleased to see this has been modded as it should be.
Don't speak too soon; the score has been bouncing up and down. The negative moderation varies between "troll" (which means saying something you don't believe; anyone familiar with my posting history knows I've been playing this harp since 2007!) and "overrated", which of course means "anything I don't agree with derp derp". If it deserves a lower score, it deserves that score for a reason, but the Overrated mod does not provide one — and it should probably be reserved for editors. Or if we should ever have them, Slashdot "experts". If tagging were done correctly (by editors, thoughtfully, at publishing time) then you could have categorical experts and it might actually kind of work, so long as they were allowed to both post and moderate.
Alas, most people are that naive when it comes to charities. That's what makes them a good vehicle for being above any kind of scrutiny.
Indeed, there are those charities which are scams right on their face. I'm always distressed in particular when someone claiming to be protecting the environment sends me multiple solicitations in windowed envelopes per month...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does it really matter who is remembered and who isn't? They will both be dead. They won't give a toss by that point.
Henry Bessemer revolutionized a bunch of industries. Andrew Carnegie was less revolutionary. Walk out in the street nearest you and ask which one people are familiar with.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Bill Gates has been VERY ABUSIVE. Hugh Pickens, that story damages your reputation! What does Malcom Gladwell know about technology? Mr. Gladwell often over-estimates how much he knows.
Now Mr. Gates is taking money he got from having an un-regulated monopoly and using it to take credit for the accomplishments of other people. There appears to be little or no evidence Mr. Gates understands much about what he is doing. He has admitted mistakes in education, for example.
Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were abusive. Bill Gates has been more destructive to the world, not less. It seems reasonable to guess that Mr. Gladwell or Mr. Pickens, or both, took money to make Bill Gates seem better than he really is.
But what about all the corruption that such a drive to consolidate and own such a large part of the operating system market did to the entire world?
The lack of foresight with such an insecure operating system opening doors for criminals is still hurting us to this day.
How about the attacks on all these other companies and organizations during that drive to the top?
How about the encroachment into the "ownership" of mere ideas, increasing the power of "intellectual property" at the expense of real progress in this industry?
If, as a cook, you fed garbage to people, and made extraordinary amounts of money, would you be considered a hero?
Even if you then took a portion of this money to "help" people.
What about all the damage you did in the first place?
What does this kind of behavior teach others?
Creating problems that drag entire civilizations down while enriching yourself, only to then feel sorry about it and direct all those resources into a completely different field by simply throwing money at it?
And are you really sure his philanthropy has no ulterior motives?
And even if not, these wealthy philanthropists are naive and disconnected from reality anyway.
They want to be #1, which is why they are so wealthy and disconnected in the first place.
It is the nature of the system. The best philanthropists are hounded by criminals for taking out their source of income that relies on destruction of society, people, etc.
And sorry, but Windows is just a virus that enabled criminal success.
So what if he is "fighting" an entirely different virus?
I mean most people hadn't heard of Shindler before the movie, hell most people probably think that he is fictional (like some believe Churchhill to be in the UK).
I'd say he was a better fit to Rockefeller, made a boatload of money being a total jerk, then spent the rest of his days trying to give it away and leave his kids something that was much harder to come by than money, a good name.
Here's an example: We could have had viable tablet computing in 1990, courtesy of a company called Go.
Since Go's device did not run Windows, Microsoft viewed them as a threat, partnered with them, stole their ideas, and pushed out Pen Windows to destroy them. This is documented in the book Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, written by a former Microsoft employee who was there at the time. Also documented by the then-CEO of Go in his book, Startup.
After that, Microsoft didn't have a competitor to crush in the space, so they only made a token effort at tablets and the technology went nowhere until the iPad came on the scene in 2010.
The tech industry boneyard is littered with companies who Microsoft viewed as a threat to Windows. Who knows what kinds of beneficial technologies could have been produced by one of them, had they been allowed to exist.
And let's not forget the countless man-hours of lost productivity spent fixing/maintaining Windows computers instead of using them to accomplish things.
Is he Austrian?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't see why Gates' charitable work will make him memorable. He's going to fund the discovery of a cure for malaria, not find it himself. Anyone here know who funded Louis Pasteur, or Edward Jenner, or Jonas Salk?
Nobody? Exactly.
Gates will probably be remembered like people like Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller: Capitalists who engaged in a great deal of philanthropic and charitable work, but are still remembered by most people for being capitalists (and "robber barons" to many of those people).
Liberty in your lifetime
The same way that the guy who discovered the disease gets to name it but the guy who cures it never does.
The reality of these foundations, except for perhaps the Hughes foundation as a notable exception, is they are occupied by parasites who are very unlikely to do anything truly effective about other parasites such as malaria.
In any event, Bill Gates will more likely be remembered as the man who dissipated the potential Moore's Law in one of the biggest Network Externalities in history and, instead of investing his philanthropic money in correcting the tax base to be undistressed liquidation value of assets rather than economic activity, achieved whatever social status he did achieve at the expense of technological civilization.
Seastead this.
Gates Foundation abuse. Copied from a comment posted below.
I'm just waiting for you to give Jobs cred for the Doom series, and why not angry birds too, both built on devices created by Jobs.
Jobs had qualities, probably the strongest nose for harnessing talent the industry has ever seen. But to even think he "built and created" the NeXT computer is just silly. He was not an engineer. Yes, he had skills when it comes to understanding technology, but he never built anything.
since everything people will remember is that guy who wrote an operating system and gave it away for free.
The same operating system they still will use in the future.
Thus they will not remember them at all and when asked who was the most influental It-personality in the year 2000 they will answer;
Linux Torvalds - the guy who wrote the operating system Linux and gave it away for free.
PS Yes, they will probably spell Linus with an x, because noone will remember unix.
Just saying it like it are.
I assume you must be RMS, posting to the web via an esoteric combination of shell scripts in order to avoid contamination. If, however, you're writing this from a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, or anything with a GUI, then you must be a huge hypocrite, since you owe it to Steve Jobs for bringing those tools to the masses.
Rockefeller
Carnegie
Nobel
These men are not remembered for their ruthless business tactics or their domination of the oil and steel industries, but for the legacy of philanthropic work they left behind.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Maybe you weren't around in the 1980s. Everything was proprietary and super expensive. MS broke this by licensing MS-DOS to Compaq over IBM's objections. This triggered an avalanche of new companies like Dell and competition between hardware OEMs which drove down prices and made PCs affordable by giving users hardware choice Even Linux started out on x86 compatible chips.
From Compaq's WIki entry:
In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 at $2995, considerably more affordable than the Canadian Hyperion. The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop; some called it a "suitcase computer" for its size and the look of its case. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC. It was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year and generating $111 million in sales revenue. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series. Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC. Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license the operating system to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering at a cost of $1 million.[12][13][14] Phoenix Technologies would shortly follow their lead, but soon "clone BIOSes" were available from many other companies who reverse engineered IBM's design, then sold their version to the PC clone manufacturers.
What about Dell then?
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PCs Limited while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.[7] Dell dropped out of school in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family.
In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the "Turbo PC", which sold for US$795.[8] PCs Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.
The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988 and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share.[9] In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.[10]
Would these companies have succeeded if Microsoft did not license MS-DOS to them? Remember that all we had then were super expensive proprietary hardware, and driving down the costs led to the PC revolution(and then the internet revolution) across the world. Why did Linus start Linux on a x86 and not an Apple? Even Apple switched to x86 hardware in 2005 to drive down costs. Also, having one platform to develop for reduced costs for developers, instead of having of spend a lot of effort to support multiple competing platforms, monoculture has it's advantages and a lot of drawbacks too.
Bill Gates' vision was a computer on every desk, at work and at home(unlike IBM's) and he succeeded. And once he succeeded immensely, instead of turning into another Scrooge Mcduck, he left everything, including the company he founded to work full time helping and visiting the worst off people in the world who can't even afford a phone, forget about a PC and spending tens of billions of dollars on preventing and curing AIDS. It sickens me to see people attacking him for it in various ways, based on their extreme biases like about Netscape self destructi
This space for rent.
That likes to weave propaganda into his articles:
http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
Absolute statements are never true
Gladwell is way off base. We remember the business giants of bygone eras for being business giants, not their charitable work. Rockefeller is known for oil more than anything else. Likewise with J. P. Morgan and banking, Carnegie and steel, Vanderbilt and railroads, etc. None of these guys have a savory reputation. They were all known for being ruthless businessmen ready to engage in any profitable behavior no matter how unethical, if they had good odds of getting away with it or getting off lightly if caught.
Today, there isn't a one among our best business leaders who doesn't have more and worse baggage than the average politician. Nor has there ever been. The very "best" business leaders ever (as crudely measured by wealth) look pathetic next to the best statesmen, scientists, journalists, explorers, military leaders, sports stars, artists, and performers. Top business leaders are almost more infamous than famous. Always seem to leave behind them a long trail of victims of dirty competition, callousness, theft, treachery, betrayal, bribery, graft, and corruption. Many even think that sort of thing might be necessary to succeed big in business, so bad is its reputation. One of the earliest business leaders recorded in history, Crassus, the wealthiest Roman ever, was of the same stripe. Greedy, unprincipled, arrogant, and crass. The very word "crass" comes from his name.
For the most part, their charitable work looks like feeble attempts to make up for the damage they did to accomplish their rise, to buy love and popularity just like they buy everything else. And it's never above suspicion, as charitable contributions have been used and abused to dodge taxes.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Tech is still climbing the "rockstar ladder of media attention". At this point it's a feeding frenzy- and "journalists" with no clue about tech are running around everywhere looking for a story.
The difference these days is a good one though. The debates are not lost in history- because much more material is retained digitally. Unlike something in the past where only a handful of sources were available (like Roman history), people looking back 50 years from now will have a clearer view.
As volatile as digital storage is, the fact that so much is actually stored digitally, means that Steve Jobs may not be forgotten. Right down to his abuse of the handicapped parking spot.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Then wrongly, of course. It was Dan Bricklin primarily, and the IBM logo secondarily. I.e. Apple ][ was making inroads into business with Visicalc before the IBM PC came along. The IBM logo just gave businesses cover to save face. And of course that's not even mentioning the whole Digital Research and QDOS stories you were hinting at.
They definitely didn't create the first smartphone that didn't suck. They just created the first smartphone with consumer popularity. There is a difference.
Gladwell could be right.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is already putting serious, notable and measurable dents into 3rd world misery by means of information and working on optimised medication, simple methods for hygene and pathogen-free water and a number other things. Some of the richest people on the planet have vowed considerable portions of their fortune to the foundation and its cause and the foundations financial reserves and resources are massive on a scale never seen before.
However, this is a non-fight. Steve Jobs himself aknowledge BGs considerable contributions to the worlds improvement with his foundation and BGs intent of not simply wanting to be 'the richest guy on the graveyard' (quote from their joint interview).
As for Steve Jobs bickering about the oxygen mask on his death-bed, I must say, I'd side with Steve Jobs. There is an abundance of man-made shit in this world where the people building and designing it didn't give a seconds worth of thoughts to wether the design makes sense or not. I'd bet money that this also goes for most oxygen masks.
I praise him for giving his designers flak whenever they came up with half-assed shit. We need more CEOs like him who actually care.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
OK, so in protest I will not watch any Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Swamp People, Mountain Men, or Ancient Aliens
THey used to have some good shows on that channel.
a hell of a lot more than it will Malcolm Gladwell.
Indeed, history remembers Bill Gates for having little respect for the law.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Even in giving he has to have the high score. :-)
Anyway, good on him.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Malcolm Gladwell is in the pocket of any corporate entity that feels like paying his fees. His game has already been exposed. Don't believe a word he says.
Let's consider for a moment:
One of the people has the legacy of being a ruthless, genius businessman who invented some of the most crucial technology in effect today in his garage. He is a huge philanthropist as well as a corporate leader, and doesn't overstep his bounds as far as his reach within the company.
The other one did some nice work piggybacking off a few key computing concepts invented by the other guy or European tech companies, was provided with multiple millions of dollars in what can only be called a 'bailout' by the other team, co-opted a long-standing and popular operating system to overcharge and profit greatly from, pioneered plastic computer cases and portable music players, invented a style of turtleneck-chic, and was a massive dong to just about everybody he ever met.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The Chinese term for 13 is "ten three" (the word for "ten", followed by the word for "three"). Furthermore, every digit is one syllable. It really does make learning easier for children. The ease of learning is even more apparent when learning multiplication, since there is a certain rhythm when you recite the multiplication table.
Gladwell actually does address the concept of cumulative advantage, as applied to sports. Kids with January birthdays are more likely to do well in children's sports leagues, and the slight advantage they have at every stage in their sports training leads to a preponderance of professional athletes with January birthdays. Likewise, Chinese children learn to count earlier, start learning multiplication around first grade, and can move on to more advanced topics. This is not to say that all Chinese people are good at math, though. There still exist analytical and artistic students, and generally Chinese school systems allow students to specialize in math/science or the arts after elementary school.
But I also know that andrew carnegie was a jerk. And I expect that is how gates will also be remembered. You cannot buy your way into heaven.
Pointing out that you are a moron because you don't recognize the current condition of technology development, is not an ad hominem attack.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Most major ideas and concepts for computing came from the F/OSS community, which spent virtually little effort marketing, and most of the effort doing.
Like Thomas Edison before them, both men did more to hold back technology than to advance it, but with the money he made he was able to write himself into history as a brilliant mind, when in reality he was a 2-bit thug.
"Who invented the Car?" ...
A. Henry Ford
B. Mr. General Motors
C.
> A. Henry Ford. I think, I didn't realize there was a Mr. Motors and he was a general. Can I change my answer?
--Think decades in the future--
Who invented the PC?
>What is a PC?
Personal Computer
>That Apple guy? Steve something...
Who invented the cell phone?
>Just a second...Siri, who invented the cell phone?
>>Siri: Apple invented the cell phone.
>Apple.
Who is Bill Gates?
>Some big ego rich guy who payed to have his name put on some buildings around the country. Like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Probably a jerk who did bad things to get wealthy but when he got old he realized his power was useless so he tried to use it to get immortality; you know, like the Pharaohs did - being a god doesn't matter if you don't have monuments around to remind people.
Bill Gates created Microsoft
>What is that? Modern fabric softener?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The renaissance is upon us NOW. Wake up.
Good-bye
His work at Pixar deserves more then a blurb. Pixar consumed Disney, thats a mighty feat.
Good-bye
Only because 'history' gets to be re-written by the Gates' of this world. Only the other day I read in a book on the history of the Internet that people didn't get to browsing until 'Internet Explorer` was created by Microsoft - neither of which is true.
AccountKiller
I think how long that takes will depend on the success of Apple and the success of Bill Gates' charity work.
...and the author too! "The sky is falling!" Mr. Gladwell shouts. The world is becoming overpopulated!
And now, "Steve Jobs will be forgotten!"
This guy knows how to create a sensation, much better than he knows how to draw a reasonable premise.
Rockefeller and Carnegie were CEOs that history remembers because of philanthropy. Because of they way they spent their money their name is on all kinds of stuff. From libraries, colleges, streets, and prizes. Gates will be remembered as that kind of CEO. Jobs wasn't an inventor like Thomas Edison. He didn't invent Pixar, the IPhone, or the personal computer. Ford isn't remembered because he made the best cars. He is remembered because he changed American industry. Jobs hasn't done anything like that. Apple hasn't shared with other companies the secrets of its success. There are no companies out there imitating Apple and making the margins Apple is making.
So he's saying, "I can predict future history!"
Gladwell doesn't get it: Gates is like the robber barons who realized that after all the evil they have done they now need to spend a portion of their fortune, just a small part, on buying back their soul. He is not doing charity work. He is buying publicity and he hopes his soul with it. Think Rockefeller. Think great Evil.
His work consisted of funding it. Writing a check is not something worth talking about.
Then wrongly, of course. It was Dan Bricklin primarily, and the IBM logo secondarily. I.e. Apple ][ was making inroads into business with Visicalc before the IBM PC came along. The IBM logo just gave businesses cover to save face. And of course that's not even mentioning the whole Digital Research and QDOS stories you were hinting at.
That's the conundrum, isn't it? Does history remember the pioneers or populizers? While Gates certainly played a significant role and was a pioneer with Basic, others created the environment for him to succeed. Apple had quite a few advantages early on (VisiCalc, Applewriter and later AppleWorks) but didn't capitalize on their position. DR certainly blew it big time. History may very well mark the beginning of the PC era as the introduction of the IBM PC, and place Gates at the center of the revolution and relegate others to a lesser role.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Gates has taken a path much like J.P. Getty. For you youngsters in the crowd, John Paul Getty founded a company called Standard Oil which eventually became a monopoly in its day much like Microsoft in its day. The government took Standard Oil to court and charged them with monopolistic practices (sound familiar?). Getty, by all accounts, was a real prick. Ruthless and greedy do not even begin to describe him. But his son was able to get him to soften up a bit and in a later chapter of his life Getty Sr. became quite charitable. He famously handed out dimes to strangers. In the end, the Getty family gave a lot of money to charity. This sort of thing has happened with many of the rich and famous families (Kennedy, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.). Once you turn into a nice guy people tend to forget how you got all that money in the first place. I suspect that Melinda Gates deserves a lot of credit for Bill turning to charity in this phase of his life. As much as I despise Gates' business practices at Microsoft I have to give him credit for his charity work. Their foundation has made an astounding contribution to world health. Jobs, for all his cool gadgets and brilliant business moves, comes off as a bit of a cheapskate on the charity front.
Since when do people not deserve a credit for good taste in marriage? Bill is being loyal to his family unlike his polititian namesake.
and that is designed to garner a lot of attention. Once you've hooked people you then lay out a case to back your thesis by re-defining standards, ignoring any evidence that doesn't advance your thesis, exaggerating any evidence that does further your thesis (in the Nixon case you ignore Watergate and his repeated law breaking and offer up the fact that he signed the EPA into law, the 26th amendment passed on his watch and he was supported by Sammy Davis Jr.), avoiding anything that resembles in-depth analysis and offering up loads of anecdotes and bon mots to back your thesis while completely disregarding any empirical research. The other schtick is to take something incredibly complex, such as the psychology of decision making (excellently covered in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow and simplify most of the substance out of it so you can write a book like Blink and still end up fucking it up.
The goal of writers such as Gladwell, George Gilder, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks is not to enlighten readers but to sell lots of books that reinforce the prejudices of the status quo and which don't require the reader to think to much. The effect is that the reader goes away thinking that they've learned something without ever having to actually think. The fact is that nobody knows who will be more remembered in 50 years, Gates or Jobs. By then both of them might have faded into obscurity. How many people today remember Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of television) or David Sarnoff (the CEO of RCA who stole all of Farnsworth's ideas)? Not too many.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I see Bill Gates being renumbered more then Steve jobs. I mean you can walk up to almost any on on the street and ask them who is Bill Gates? And they will have some kind of answer. Richest man, CEO of Microsoft, Ect. But i don't think the same can be said for Steve jobs.
Andrew Carnegie and John D.Rockefeller are remembered, usually sans first names, because they gave money away to intellectual causes - Rockefeller grants, Carnegie Libraries, Carnegie hall, Carnegie-Mellon University. They made lots of money keeping down workers' wages and keeping prices high.
But what do you do after you accumulate that pile? How could you spend a billion dollars on yourself? or forty? Time to turn over a new leaf and spend the money making people happy.
But there is no Stephen P. Jobs Foundation anymore. Apple may live on, but Jobs is history.
Epitaph: At last! Root access!
...Windows and Office, two of the most widely used software products of all time.
...with respective market shares of 92.2% (Windows-worldwide in 2011 per "Net Applications") and 94% (MS Office per "Gartner" )
FTFY
'[Jobs] was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen,' said Gladwell
And Gladwell should know ... the latter description fits him to a T.
... or Gladwell.
Quick now: who was the president of IBM in 1962? I think in 50 years we won't remember Jobs or Gates
licet differant, aequabitur
'ruthless capitalist' billionaires don't suddenly wake up one day nice people.
Something's always bothered me about the Gate's foundation, pushing out GMOs and vaccines to people who can't even access clean water.
Greg Palast summed it better than I can:
I bet Mr. Gates, so quick to shout "piracy!" could name two products that
depend heavily on the lifted intellectual discoveries of others: MS-DOS and
Windows. To make sure no one could steal from him what he had so freely
boosted, Gates has run an international campaign to legally lock up his
monopoly on ideas. Bill's nobody's fool. He must know that if the
intellectual property defenses are breached, it will come from the need to
get cheap AIDS drugs to Africa. So we see Gates putting his two cents (in his
case, two billion) into the Africa AIDS holocaust issue. In February 2002,
Bill and wife Melinda made the cover of Newsweek for their bighearted
philanthropy. The grinning couple's foundation has spent hundreds of millions
for AIDS treatment in Africa, working paw-in-claw with Merck and other Big
Pharma corporations tied to a PR campaign that drowns out the calls of
doctors pleading to end TRIPS restrictions. If there's any doubt where the
Gates's hearts lie, the Wall Street Journal notes that their foundation has,
oddly, invested over $200 million in drug company stocks. If
this "charitable" operation eviscerates protest against the TRIPS
thought-police and medical patents are upheld, Gates's donations could have
the effect of killing more people than they save.
From "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" page 190
While this does wonders for my schadenfreude towards Steve Jobs fans, this really is non-news. Who cares what one guy thinks may happen in the future, especially when even if it does happen it still will be unimportant?
I never vered him in the place. so I cant revere him.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
"lol If you know well about how the system works, this donation thing and personal foundations is a tax evasion scheme"
Why don't you explain it for us then.
I think that we can all agree that the person most likely to be forgotten in this article is Malcolm Gladwell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In 50 years we will only remember Microsoft Bob.
Design evolves - Most of what's considered good design at any one time looks horribly dated a decade later. Look at the old Apple machines, the G5s and G3s look terrible, it's only because there are newer, more modern products still made by Cupertino to keep their reputation. As soon as that stops, they fade, and Jobs with them.
Now, THAT is a great example of an ad hominem attack.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That Malcolm Gladwell is an idiot...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows