[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Bill Gates: 'Steve Jobs was always cooler than me' here

[MohammadMozib]

Mr Gates, you are an incredibly humble person. What you have done for humanity, a thousand Jobs cannot do that. Salute to you sir and may God reward you accordingly.

[Hologram]

Re: "Mr Gates, .... What you have done for humanity, a thousand Jobs cannot do that."

Well, neither did your God.

Touching comment. Your point?

The truly humble man eschews recognition and many a truly good man carries out his good deeds without speaking of them.

[BigBanks]

Hologram...

This post has been edited by BigBanks: 05 February 2013 - 11:15 AM

[KLanD]

"Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted that late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was "always cooler" than him."

I had no idea this was such a critical matter in need of his clarification.. seriously, who cares who's "cooler"..... Apple fans maybe?

[QUADICON]

Wow...PCW is really late with this one. This video has been on Neowin and Engadget like last week some time.

All I can say is, being cool doesn't get you as far as being rich. See what happened to the "cool" guy who is a liar, a bigot, a hypocrite, abandoned his family, stole from other companies and now he's dead. A price to pay for being cool.

Bill on the other hand was a business savvy, mathematical genius, who bullied other companies, only to push Microosft to the top of the food chain so to speak.

He never spoke bad of Jobs even when Jobs publicly and even with Gates on the stage with him, try to belittle Gates and poke fun wherever possible. Gates has always shown class.

I mean how else is he to act when he knows he has a more advanced company, has 1.3B know users of his greatest product, who has been dubbed the world's richest man. Who give gobs of money to benefit people.

When you have almost all the money in the world, who cares if you think I am cool or not. He can buy cool and chooses not too. If I had a choice of being cool or rich...rich wins every time. Cool is the new boring.

See Fonzie was cool. Ice is cool. Steve Jobs isn't cool, he only pretended to be. Gates is cool, because he isn't hater, he isn't a thief or a liar or a hypocrite. He is a gentleman while Jobs was the devil.

[QUADICON]

what I hate most is every time they get Gates on an interview, they always have to ask him about Jobs. Gates is a class act. You are NEVER going to catch him publicly saying anything bad about Jobs. Unlike Jobs who made a career at doing such to Gates.

Gates looked up to Jobs in many ways, he even said so himself. Like he jokingly said "he wished he had Steve's tastes".

Gates is the man most businessmen or women should be like in many ways. Copying after Jobs would only land you in the same place.

Gates you are awesome. Thanks for all the good times.

[ChatTn23]

I would not take anything away from either of them. They both have done a lot to make the technological world both fun and truly useful.

[MohammadMozib]

Quote

Re: " Mr Gates, .... What you have done for humanity, a thousand Jobs cannot do that. " Well, neither did your God. Touching comment. Your point? The truly humble man eschews recognition and many a truly good man carries out his good deeds without speaking of them.

If you don't believe in God, that's totally up to you. You can burn in hell for all I care. And don't you think it's a bit difficult to donate $28 billion from hiding? Anyway, what are you doing over here instead of worshiping Jobs' tomb?

[richard2394729]

BILL GATES AND STEVE JOBS HAVE MADE NO CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTERS.

Gates NEVER wrote DOS (IBM's PC OS), and has NEVER written an OS in his entire life. Gates bought DOS for $50,000, which was a clone of CP/M, written by Gary Kildall, the guy who did all the pioneering work into microcomputer (PC) operating systems, including writing the first BIOS, still used in PCs today. Kildall was a professor of Computer Science, far smarter than Jobs and Gates.

Gates effectively stole the market Kildall created, and, to this very day, has NEVER given Kildall any credit. Yet, without Kildall, Gates would have remained a nobody (Microsoft was a small software house selling compilers and interpreters, and had no experience writing OSes).

Search youtube for:

"Computer Chronicles: Gary kildall special (Part 1 of 2)"; and
"Computer Chronicles - The Apple Macintosh" by user "EdgyRootStudios" - 14:23 in you see Gary Kildall speaking, and the OS we would have got (GEM) had Gates NOT poached the market that Kildall created that made Gates so rich.

And Google without quotation marks "Gary Kildall and Collegial entrepreneurship drdobbs" - an article in Dr.Dobbs.

IBM went to Bill Gates BY MISTAKE, asking for an OS. Gates told IBM "I don't do operating systems, speak to Gary Kildall". IBM did. But IBM insisted that the Kildalls sign a non-disclosure agreement that allowed IBM to reveal what would be said in their meeting, while gagging the Kildalls. Hence, no meeting. That's when Gates saw his chance, bought a clone of Kildall's OS and stole the market Kildall had single-handedly created. CP/M was the Windows of its day and the only suitable OS at the time for IBM's PC.

Gary Kildall was a much nicer character than Gates (a ruthless businessman). Kildall co-presented "Computer Chronicles" for six years and you can find the episodes on YouTube.

As for Jobs, it was Steve WOZNIAK who created the first Apple computer, designed the hardware, wrote all the software - Jobs saw it and said let's sell it. Jobs couldn't program or do engineering. Once (more than once!) Jobs cheated Wozniak out of money, giving Wozniak a task that Jobs couldn't do himself, and then telling Wozniak that Atari had paid him $700, when Atari had actually paid $5,000. Wozniak was given $350 and Jobs kept the other $4,650 for himself, having done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER. This was before Apple was formed and Wozniak only found out about this theft ten years later.

But none of this matters. The media and others only see POWER and MONEY, and hence fawn all over two men who have never done anything worthy of note - Jobs never had one original idea in his life. It was - and still is! - all being done by others. Gates is - & Jobs was - however, adept at avoiding tax, and creating a persona and image that bears little resemblance to reality.

[GetReal]

Having long ago been an Apple fan and user, and then Jobs changed apple's complete product line - dropping systems and support that I owned and had Seriously overpaid to get. His only claim to fame was intimidation and greed. I never returned to anything made by apple.

Gates Good was unified operating systems - this when there were many dozens of OS and you could not buy the nice program your friend had without also buying a clone of his system.
On the downside, Gates released versions of software that he already knew should have never seen the light of day (W95-Millineum) plus Gates deliberately copied Jabs in the intimidation area - for business or home user; his way or hit the highway!

[StratCat]

Quote

Once (more than once!) Jobs cheated Wozniak out of money, giving Wozniak a task that Jobs couldn't do himself, and then telling Wozniak that Atari had paid him $700, when Atari had actually paid $5,000. Wozniak was given $350 and Jobs kept the other $4,650 for himself, having done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER..

Homer Simpson (to Moe): But I came up with the drink (the Flaming Moe)
Moe (to Homer): Yeah, but I came up with the idea of charging $6.95 for it!

MORAL: It takes more than a good idea to make a million dollars. It also takes a good businessman.

[GetReal]

richard2394729 >>> you should get your "facts" correct before opening your mouth! The second computer I ever owned ran Bill Gates developed (NOT Microsoft) Basic (Altair 680), which the industry labeled as an operating system (true, TOday that would not happen).
next; IBM actually went to Garry Kildell (cp/m) first > he would not meet with them (allegedly off playing golf) so only then did IBM go to Gates. Gates bought an in-development OS from Seattle Computer Company - fixed the bugs - added support for floppy & hard disks, etc, then sold it to IBM as a joint development effort - nothing came from Kildell in that effort. Only near 2 years later was cp/m licensed and sold by IBM. < I still have floppies of both OS and a dump of that Basic.

[richard2394729]

Gates didn't unify anything. IBM created the PC and it was the PC that created a unified market. IBM's modular design - and Intel's CPUs! - are what made it such a success. Although, without "cheap" IBM clones, things would probably have turned out very differently - as the clones were what most people bought.

Also, Gates bought DOS, a clone of CP/M, written by Gary Kildall. No Kildall, no CP/M; no CP/M, no clone of CP/M; no clone of CP/M, no QDOS; No QDOS, no OS for Gates to buy; no OS for Gates to buy, no Microsoft desktop monopoly.

Gates and Jobs were managers (Gates could program, but he was nothing special) - they're expendable! The first smart phone was created by IBM in 1993, the "Simon Personal Communicator" and there were numerous PDAs and other similar devices around at the time. Some company had to be first with a modern version of that 1990s technology, and, as Apple was struggling, Jobs took a risk, and the risk paid off. His death was very fortunate - at least for his so-called legacy - as he would never have repeated that success.

No one actually needed him, though. Managers control the engineers. And managers said no you can't do any of this until we tell you to. Then Jobs told them to; then other managers followed suit. Computers have been shrinking for decades, a handheld computer was inevitable - people in the 1950s predicted it would happen. Apple didn't create anything fundamentally new; the innards all come from other firms; some of the firms Apple has now bought.

[scoundrel]

Gates could never have gotten away with the crap Jobs did.

Gates was correctly treated with contempt when MS used undocumented Windows function calls in Office. Gates was correctly treated with contempt when he strong armed OEM into bundling Office, or they couldn't get Windows. Gates was correctly treated with contempt when he "proprietized" open standards. Gates was treated with contempt for bundling Internet Explorer.

Jobs introduced the "App Approval Process", which among other things, forbids duplicate (competing) functionality and locked down iOS to a single store. Could Gates get away with that?

One proved to be a humanitarian, the other get's excuses made for him. Puhlease!

This post has been edited by scoundrel: 05 February 2013 - 03:23 PM

[TimT999]

I'm surprised at the number of folks here who seem to believe Gates and Jobs were just managers and did nothing to create the technology that came from out of their organization.

The obvious response of course is to ask these trash talk folks -- what have you done? Have you ever created anything useful or made a product or contribution that has made our lives easier? I guess not.

And of course if these naysayers had ever had a position of authority, they would realize how much Jobs and Gates actually did to help create our current technological reality. They are like film directors -- they don't say a single line of dialogue or shoot a frame of film, but their fingerprints are all over the picture.

It's true that Jobs didn't actually build the iPod or iPhone himself. But anyone who thinks that the engineer or programmer is the only one who makes it happen has forgotten the designers, product managers, usability experts and a host of other support folks.

Clearly Jobs was involved in many of these elements. He was brilliant at usability, he had a great sense of design, and he was probably more of the final product manager for the key Apple products than anyone. Much the same can be said for Gates when it comes to the Windows OS and products such as Office.

Of course other companies also put out competitive products and might have eventually figured out the secret sauce that MS and Apple harnessed for their successes. But a Samsung or a Dell would have made an entirely different set of choices without a company like Apple to define the interface and design paradigm.

A product is far more than a set of technologies that any company can package. KIA, BMW or Lexus may use the same basic technology but any fool can tell them apart. The same holds true for tech product companies.

[richard2394729]

@GetReal, here we go. Those who love crawling to rich CEOs are coming out of their rocks to attack me.

>you should get your "facts" correct before opening your mouth!

I didn't open my mouth - I moved my fingers across a keyboard.

>The second computer I ever owned ran Bill Gates developed (NOT
>Microsoft) Basic (Altair 680), which the industry labeled as an operating
>system (true, TOday that would not happen).

It was Paul Allen and Bill Gates who wrote a 4K BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. And the maths routines were written by a third person. THAT'S THREE PEOPLE! Since when did BASIC become an OS that could be ported to different machines? If Gates had an OS, why did he have to buy a clone of CP/M?

If you want a good version of BASIC, try BBC BASIC by Acorn, far superior to Microsoft's BASIC at the time, and still impressive today.

>next; IBM actually went to Garry Kildell (cp/m) first

Not the version I read, but then there are several versions. Neither version matters, as it's just a story, and NOT an essential element of how Gates ended up with the IBM desktop monopoly - namely, BY BUYING AN OS, not writing one.

Could you provide me with the evidence that Kildall was playing golf or flying a plane - again, several versions! - and refusing to meet with IBM?

Gates bought QDOS, a CLONE of CP/M. It was even designed to be compatible with software that ran under CP/M.

The facts are that Gates did NOTHING that no one else could not have done. He was NOT a pioneer of operating systems, and he has written not a single program worthy of note.

[richard2394729]

@GetReal, couple of worthwhile articles:

theregister.co.uk/2012/08/07/kildall_unforensic_ieee_smear/
theregister.co.uk/2007/07/30/msdos_paternity_suit_resolved/

As they point out that I forgot to mention, CP/M was eventually sold alongside DOS (a CP/M clone) with the first IBM PC, but priced at $240, six times the cost of DOS (a CP/M clone).

Given that CP/M was the Windows of its day, had loads of software packages written for it, had IBM priced CP/M fairly (instead of deliberately killing it), people would most likely have chosen CP/M.

And from wiki:

"MS-DOS's main innovation was its FAT file system. This similarity made it easier to port popular CP/M software like WordStar and dBase."

"WordStar, one of the first widely used word processors, and dBASE, an early and popular database program for small computers, were originally written for CP/M.

"An early outliner, KAMAS (Knowledge and Mind Amplification System) was also written for CP/M, though later rewritten for MS-DOS.

"Turbo Pascal, the ancestor of Borland Delphi, and Multiplan, the ancestor of Microsoft Excel, also debuted on CP/M before MS-DOS versions became available.

"AutoCAD, a CAD application from Autodesk debuted on CP/M.

"A host of compilers and interpreters for popular programming languages of the time (such as BASIC and FORTRAN) were available, among them several of the earliest Microsoft products."

[ChatTn23]

There seems to be a lot of history here, some of it is even good information, but along with a lot of hate, and I’m not sure what’s going on. Seems like I was the one that stirred up the pot without intending to do so, certainly not in the direction it has been going. I have to side with TimT999 here. Not because he seems to agree with me, but because he has seen the big picture.

Both Gates and Jobs had visions that grew along the way. Whether they ever actually developed anything themselves is not an issue to me. What they did do is surround themselves with the people to help them meet their business objectives. This is what good managers do. I have looked at Jobs as a person that was more concerned with the end users of his products. He wanted to keep things simple and fun and it paid off. Gates, on the other hand, took more of a macroscopic look at the computer business. He concentrated on selling products that businesses could purchase and modify for their specific needs where as Jobs wanted his systems locked down. Microsoft’s software did not always result in the end user being a happy camper, but it made jobs for IT types if nothing else. Gates paved the way for many companies competing for the desktop and laptop computer business, which from what I have read, IBM wanted to abandon anyway. IBM had bigger fish to fry in those days are still frying some of them. IBM and Gates together could have locked down their systems as did Apple, but I’m glad that did not happen.

There were some shady things that occurred along the way on both sides. If anyone wanted to dig deep enough both Jobs and Gates could probably be made out to be devils of some sort, but its all silly stuff compared to the big picture of what their visions have contributed. You can’t deny that when it comes to hand held computing devices, those developers that are not directly Apple related are directly competing with I-Pad and I-Phone market place. Even Microsoft is now trying to get into the act.

[Hologram]

MohammadMozib, on 05 February 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

Quote

Re: " Mr Gates, .... What you have done for humanity, a thousand Jobs cannot do that. " Well, neither did your God. Touching comment. Your point? The truly humble man eschews recognition and many a truly good man carries out his good deeds without speaking of them.

If you don't believe in God, that's totally up to you. You can burn in hell for all I care. And don't you think it's a bit difficult to donate $28 billion from hiding? Anyway, what are you doing over here instead of worshiping Jobs' tomb?

Those are pretty hateful words for someone who believes he basks in the glory of a forgiving God.

Both men have touched humanity in their own way and have done much more to bring people and minds together than money alone can.

Unless Bill Gates prints his own money, lets not forget that the immense fortune he is so generously sharing with his favorite causes came from somewhere. That money came from everyone who bought his company's products and then buried that cost in whatever they sold to their own customers, eventually ...us. In the end, that's how business works and that somehow now gives Gates the power to decide who will get to live by benefitting from his generosity and who wont. That's a huge responsibility I'm glad I don't have to deal with.

I just found it interesting that in your original comment you praised Bill Gates for doing what you believe "a thousand Jobs" ... and the almighty could not.

You could have simply praised Mr. Gates and wished him well but felt the need to put down another person in order to fulfill your agenda. The former was a great initiative, the latter petty.