Discussion on:

Poll: Has Steve Jobs or Bill Gates made the greater contribution to tech?

Original post:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=7442

"Steve Jobs started the computer revolution."
That is all that needs to be said.

Steve capitalized on them. Bill tried to, and succeeded, in bringing the technology to "the rest of us" despite relentless legal suits from Apple - which by the way killed off the likes of Digital Research among many others who were trying to do a better job. And let's not forget where Steve got his idea of the Mac OS - it was from Xerox.

Xerox had decided not to produce PARC's PC. Mr Jobs organized a tour of PARC's facility with permission to bring along engineers and take notes. He did get the idea for a GUI OS from Xerox but it was not remotely stollen as some like to suggest.

If I'm remembering history correctly, Mr Wozniak had already designed the hardware side of it; keyboard and mainboard mounted in wood chassis with monitor resting on top and mouse beside.

So, Mac OS was inspired by Xerox research however the PC form factor was not (or was inspired by general industry ideas of the time?).

Anybody remember Framework from Ashton-Tate?
It ran under DOS and made windows of the applications and you could easily transfer spreadsheets to word docs to presentation docs to databases and you write macros in their programming language called FRED. Gee - how far we have advanced!

... without Apple announcing their plans about it first? You forget that PARC invited both Gates and Jobs to look at this 'new' concept. Gates turned it down. Gates agreed with Xerox at the time that a GUI would never work as a computer interface. Then again, Gates also believed 640 KBytes was all the RAM a PC would ever need.

The same time when windows came to the market mainframes did their job fine with 64K to 256K memory...

While Xerox invented the GUI, they considered it a worthless concept and would have thrown it away, though they invited Jobs, Gates and others to view it. Gates turned them down, Jobs not only accepted, but paid to spend time with the team that created it--Apple subsequently took a trash idea and turned it into something people wanted. Gates had to copy it one way or another and get it into the enterprise or lose relevance in the market.

Unix--or rather Bell Labs--contributed to the OS environment, but again it was an enterprise-only OS until Jobs created his NeXt OS--about the same time Linux Torvald created Linux. Because Jobs and the Apple R&D managed to make Unix easy for anyone to use by putting a GUI on top of it, OS X now holds somewhere between 15-20% of the established OS base in the US depending on the reports you read and about 8% world wide; Linux holds about 2% not counting Android, which has brought Linux much farther into the public eye by -- again -- making it easy to use, not a hobbyist's toy.

So I have to disagree. While others were the inventors, Jobs and Gates were the movers. It's as simple as that.

I'd have to vote for Jobs - at least he had a product BEFORE he took other's ideas and software and made them his own. Gates "bought" DOS for next to nothing, and then took ideas from Xerox for windows.
The Xerox Star GUI was introduced at Siggraph in 1980 - I remember - I was in the room.

Ford made the first mass-produced car but it doesn't mean they lead the way NOW with automobile mass production.

Apple computers and Windows OSs are both important just for different reasons. But if I was forced to choose, then I would say Bill Gates did the most.

I say that because Windows, regardless of what you think of it, was revolutionary in bringing computing to the masses. There were (are) problems with Windows that force people to be more security conscious, not a bad thing. Windows help to indirectly create a new market in Linux (indirectly simply because people wanted something else!).

So whether he gets the title for the right or wrong reasons, Bill Gates contribution, in my opinion outweighs Steve Jobs.

GNU was started to create a freely available Unix in response to the closed source Unix's. The GNU project started with the userland working there way down towards the kernel.

Linux was started as a research project based on Minix because Mr Torvalds was interested in how OS interact with hardware. It was only a kernel though and not much use without a userland.

GNU needed a kernel and Linux needed a userland, hence, GNU/Linux (the first Linux based Distribution).

"Death to Windows" may be the popular rally cry among the activist FOSS folk now but "Unix for the masses" was the original rally cry.

The GPL license itself being inspired by the inability to fix a broken closed source printer driver and because software was originally shared as source and developed collaboratively before proprietary software made producing money more important than producing interesting code.

Windows popularity itself was built on the already entrenched Dos in businesses. It's popularity was delivered on the back of Microsoft's previous sales strategies. I don't remember the marketing hype that preceded Win3.* launches but Win95 sure got a lot of media airtime. It took hold because businesses didn't have to replace Dos software and could gain wysiwyg software by simply adding the Windows window manager over top.

That Windows (read Microsoft strategy) is the reason more people want to move towards a Linux solution?

That was my original point: Bill Gates has done alot within the IT world, but not necessarily in favour of Microsoft products.

People talking about Ubuntu and Mint is remarkably recent compared to talk about Apple as an alternative. Most people remain oblivious to alternatives or content to suffer Windows though. I know my original interest was in gaining an additional OS not leaving a current one (would be around NT4). Even now, Linux distributions are not the conscious choice of most people immigrating from Windows.

Sadly, everything Mr Gates has done has been for Microsoft's products. He's more a business Hacker than a computer Hacker; and, he's a pretty solid computer Hacker at that. Given his upbringing, business was just another strategy game to hack (to understand and exploit natural attributes).

Mr Gates negative affects on Microsoft products have been far less than his positive affects. I can't ever remember people talking about Mr Gates being replaced the way they have with Mr Balmer.

I mean, frustration with Windows is a reason people look for alternatives. I'm just not seeing it as a primary reason driving people to look at Linux based distributions specifically. Normally the marketing budgets come into play and they make a B-line for the nearest Apple store.

(edit): wanted to add also that I personally think "to get away from Windows" or "to kill the evil MS empire" are poor reasons for someone switching to another OS. OS changes should be because the alternative delivers something of value or required. An OS that offers something of interest will be more beneficial than an OS that's only value is "not the other guy".

For me:
Windows; runs Win32 native games, runs MS Office (needed for data files and Exchange connectivity), runs Cain&Abel (fantastic infosec tool).. and that's about it.. the other software I run could easily be left behind or replaced

Debian; allows for ad-hoc use without counting licenses, native SSH and Rsync, native OS to manage servers from, custom installs can be shaped as needed far more than Win or osX, better stability, better potential for security, larger readily available software library, more interesting software for an infosec geek like me, easier updates and maintenance

osX; For me, being a different OS is reason enough. The Unix back end means it fits into my network naturally (native ssh and rsync being big parts of that). I could live without it but due to the choices of the other at home with purchasing power, I have it available to play with also.

BSD; while different from Linux based distributions, I've not yet put the time into it. In terms of functionality, I'm just not seeing enough difference from Debian with the difference of hardware support working against it. I really should look at it for use on servers though. Escaping Win/Lin/osX isn't enough motivation on it's own.

Plan9; purely because it's a different OS to look at though remains impractical for use beyond tinkering.

I have a list of other OS in waiting similar to plan9; for play not for replacement of a production OS. The key here is moving towards something interesting not escaping something old. When your primary motivation is "to get away from Windows" you spend a lot of time thinking "but Windows did this differently" or "but on Windows I used this program title" instead of "hm.. interesting, whatelse it got?"

Would you expect less from Jason?

Steve and the Woz is who started and brought the GUI to the world (which was created by Xerox).. Bill copied it from a demo unit of the Mac that Steve loaned him to just maybe write some app for it.
That is the reason Microsoft is always trying to "Catch up to Apple"

That App just happened to be MS Office. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access got their sea legs on a Mac, not Dos.. (Per my Ancedote...)

Apple and Microsoft might be the technological equivalents of chalk and cheese nowadays, but Microsoft???s involvement with Steve Jobs??? company in the early years probably saved the Mac from catastrophe. AppleSoft Basic was a Mac version of DOS licensed from Microsoft, and it???s an often-forgotten fact that Microsoft Office was released on Apple hardware long before it hit Windows ??? tacit admission, perhaps, of Apple???s early OS superiority. And, in 1997, Microsoft invested US$150 million into Apple at a time when its stocks were plunging. After the announcement, which included a commitment that Microsoft would continue to develop applications for Apple hardware, and that Apple would bundle Internet Explorer with all its systems, Apple???s stock rose nearly 35 per cent. Without Microsoft, it???s possible we???d never have had the iPhone at all.

Gates did more to boost third party technology (thus Technology as a hole) by creating software (AKA bloated)that forced people to created better and faster hardware to keep up with it.
Jobs improved technology, but basically only within his products.

Now if you had to choose which man is a better Messiah for their receptive religion (Apple vs. Microsoft) Jobs would win hands down.
Jobs has more mindless followers with excess disposable cash than Gates could ever have.

The PC form factor we use today is based on Mr Wozniak's PC form factor developed in Apple's first office; aka. a garage.

Much of what Windows users received with early Windows versions was based directly on Apple's product.

The Newton, one of the first tablets and it doesn't appear long after Palm creates the palmtop form factor.

A lot of phones are pushing to look like Iphone now too. Apple didn't invent the smartphone but they sure influenced others.

One can't really say Apple is not improvign technology, if only by providing strong competition that can demand a response from others.

"(thus Technology as a hole)" seems quite valid when you look at how much IT now costs the enterprise in maintenance and currency. IT is now and has been the biggest budgetary drain on the enterprise for over 25 years by requiring relatively large technical departments and relatively frequent hardware updates just to stay even with advancing technology. To me, while Gates had the bigger market, Apple kept pushing the technologies forward for easier-to-use and more reliable products.

Meanwhile, listen to yourself; you say Jobs has more "mindless followers" yet Gates pretty much forced 95% of the computing world to follow him. Really, which one has more mindless followers?

I went with Jobs only because of the diversity of products Apple put out - Mac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, etc. The Mac and iPhone alone are two groundbreaking devices.
Gates would win for the openness of the Windows O/S. While Apple limited their use to outside developers (a HUGE negative), Gates allowed outside developers and has made the bigger impact on software development.
It's close, but I vote Jobs. And I no longer have an iPhone and never owned a Mac.

Based on technology, Steve Jobs no doubt. iPad, iPhone, and iPad are revolutionizing the way we see the Internet.

If the vote was based on commercialism, Bill Gates no doubt.

Steve Jobs wins the vote for greatest tech innovator.

Bill Gates would win for best tech promoter.

My reason for voting for Bill Gates is simple...for better or worse, Bill has brought computing to the masses. The over 90% dominance of Windows in the OS market and Office's defacto "king" position on top of the productivity suite hill are just two of the obvious points.

The Windows "ecosystem" has been the foundation for many software & hardware company giants & dwarfs...from Adobe, Norton, Nvidia, ATI, Intel, DELL, Norton, Symantec, etc. The list is endless...

As much as Jobs & Apple have recently up the ante in the "computing cool factor"...lets face it, most of us are responding to this thread via Windows based PCs...nuff said

I look at this way.. Apples innovations or what ever you call, is only for rich people . Most of the Apple supporters are from USA. People who vote for Apple should think there are lot more people outside USA .As some one said in the post Because of Microsoft lot of other companies grew up. Also it is Microsoft who made programming so easy that any one can learn & code. other wise all the programming could have been only with nerds & scientist

I vote for Bill Gates,because the spread of windows gives us
a lot of opportunity to create or to improve our business.
Although Apple gives us the same one, they give us the restriction
simultaneously. For example, when I make new software for iphone and
I would like to give it to everyone, I need to obtain permission of apple.

I am a PC girl; my experiences with Macs have not been positive on the whole, although I do love my iPod. However, it seems to me that Steve Jobs is more of a visionary than Bill Gates. His ideas are innovative and original; Gates' ideas tend borrowing from the works of others. So yes, I voted for Jobs, even as I continue to love my PC.

Yes it starts with Steve..
The GUI and the Mouse (created by Xerox -and Steve bought the Rights) the 3.5 inch floppy, the USB and Firewire standard, Not having a Floppy.ect..

Bill .. copies, borrows, steals (look at Windows 3.11- He had to release 3.11 because of code/software within windows 3 he had not paid rights to use)

I voted Jobs... I know it was a movie... but you should really watch Pirates of Silicon Valley. It will enlighten you.

Steve Jobs was a true computer geek, and I see that nicely. He was the first to release the first GUI interface to the end users. I believe the year was 1985.

Bill Gates is just a good business man, and I say that not too thrilled. He sold something that was not his to IBM. DOS was supposed to be FREEWARE people. Yet he forced the guy who invented it to sell the rights to Microsoft. And after a partnership between Microsoft and Apple, Microsoft ended up breaking up that relationship and came out with it's first GUI interface for the end user which I believe was 1986. But guess what, Microsoft had to pay Apple for using Apple's code.

This is why I chose Jobs... he is a true pioneer to the Computer World

I agree with Dimitri915.
Surely Steve is the innovator...and the artist.

All of you forget about DESIGN!
We are talking about PERSONAL computers, and their OS. My 10 years old Titanium-Powerbook-G4 (1GHz) is simply beautiful, and still working fine with OS-X Tiger. I hope Apple will never drop this tradition.
Up to XP MS Windows was just a frustrating crap. Even OS/2 was much better. Actually the NT core is from DEC. I had less problem with ten-thousands of various Unix machines (clusters, and greeds) of a global enterprise world-wide, than my so called Windows PCs.
Positive: Steve and Bill brought computers to the broad public. Steve showed us that a computer can belong to the final art category as well.
Negative: Bill sold us junk-food, and blocked innovation. Both of them sell us products overpriced.
Finally:
Windows 7 starts to behave as a real operating system - I start to like it - however I still prefer OS-X.

Steve Jobs developed a system that is still up and running and helping developers while Bill Gates's MS-DOS is barely useful anymore, 'out of time' to speak with Rolling Stones.

Are we talking only the OS here? Apple is no more running original MacOS than Microsoft is running MS Dos. MS Dos has not been the base of the OS since Win98; everything since has been Windows GUI with emulated dos not Dos with Windows layer on top. native OS9 support has long since been pulled from osX

In terms of helping developers, Windows seems to provide more opportunity for developers. osX is a little restrictive to write for and Ios claim to fame is developer restrictions.

I've also heard that MS Dos remains very popular in embedded systems; Microsoft is still selling new licenses. I think POS machines remain a big market.

Sql server, Power PC, Office, Visio, All from microsoft (well PowerShell had a bit of Unix, courtesy of microsoft). Not only Windows. So Gates has more than Jobs, even though the latter can overcome Gates. I am still waiting for an Apple Database Engine (^^) would be nice to have one more head to head with Oracle, JBEdwards, Lotus notes MySql, MSSQL, etc.

I'm guessing you meant the "Powershell" shell software not the "Power PC" processor hardware architecture.

Anyhow, much of your list was bought from others not created or contributed by Microsoft. MS didn't contribute the product, they promoted it after others creation. It's proven a sound strategy when one's business is manufacturing profit margins; less successful if your goal is product quality.

Powershell seems a response to the shell on Unix like OS; I don't know it's development history well enough to say what code came from where. I do thank MS for a more capable shell, just wish it's scripting language was a little more like Bash scripting. If I wanted to write VC or C#, I'd use Visual Studio. Ideally, Powershell would have been CMD.com with it's scripting language improved a little not a Terminal window with over-engineered C# support.

I believe SQL server was bought and re-branded; again, don't know the history well enough to confirm. The major parts of Office are all based on bought and repackaged prior works. Visio was a solid and established application before MS bought out the company that produced it. MS Dos; bought and repackaged. Windows; stolen and repackaged. Windows network stack; BSD TCP/IP, your welcome.

Microsoft's real gift is knowing when to buy out a product just before it becomes to established or to competitive. Sadly, the software entrepreneur's wet dream remains creating something threatening enough to be bought out by Microsoft.

Already have a database engine for Apple, FileMaker solves 80% of cases that need a database. The problem is we do not want to see. Remember that Microsoft would like to buy what others are doing.

Since your title is who made the greater contribution to technology then the accolade should go to Steve Jobs who has consistantly been the inovator and inventor and pushed the boundries. Bill Gates has never invented anything but he has consistantly made technology invented by others accessable to the world.

While I have always been opposed to the proprietary nature of Apple's products, there is no question that Jobs has been the consumate innovator in bringing new concepts and products to the public. Unfortunately, that proprietary nature severely limited the scope of penetration of the Apple computer. Had he opened up the hardware architecture to third party development, Gates and Microsoft would not have commanded so large a portion of the PC market.

It is Jobs who brought the innovation, but it was Gates who saw the larger market potential. Gates excelled at recognizing good ideas and then expanding upon, or (gritting my teeth), improving upon them.

Gates has contribuited more to the tech world because thanks to the ease of use of the WYSIWYG sistem implemented in the windows environment and the scaleability of resources applied to the developing technology that followed. Apple, although pioneers themselves, stayed on the sideline for lack of resources and strategic minds that moved Microsoft in the early years.

Had Gates not learned that Apple was introducing a GUI OS in the first Mac, Windows would have never been born. Gates turned down the invitation to view the experimental technology from Xerox's PARC division and as a result, Microsoft had to scramble to produce their own while Apple was working with an already-established core.

Apple didn't stay on the sidelies for "... lack of resources and strategic minds... " but rather the lack of enterprise penetration that gave Microsoft its biggest advantage.

But the GUI, the wysiwyg, implemented in Windows was taken blatantly from Apple's OS of the time. Apple contributed the consumer graphic desktop based on research work by Xerox. Microsoft envoked an overblown sense of self entitlement and claimed Apple's GUI contributions as their own. Mr Gates actually used the defense "if we didn't steal it it'd never have gone beyond Apple's own products". One can't give Microsoft credit for the GUI without recognizing how much of that GUI was actually stolen by Microsoft.

I also don't think it was a difference of strategic minds between Apple and Microsft; they where and are focused on different goals. It's like saying McDonalds had less strategic minds than Bob's Chicken Farm because McDonalds, while running chicken farms, focuses on selling fast food not selling chickens to restaurants.

"PCs for real people"
Apple is a hardware vendor like Dell or HP; they produce the store shelf unit. Apple happens to write the embedded OS for it's hardware products; osX embedded on big boxes, Ios embedded on small boxes. Dell and HP happen to buy a third party OS rather than produce there own. Apple's choice was to retain control over both hardware and software sides of the product.

"A Microsoft product in every home, regardless of what hardware it runs on."
Microsoft is actually a component vendor; they produce an OS meant to be included in other people's products. The founding strategy is imposed dominance not high quality products for those interested.

(ok; "a computer in every home and Microsoft product running on it")

While Windows and OSX, as OS, can be compared based on technological attributes; Apple and Microsoft as companies are not comparable because they have different company goals which require different strategies. They both produce an OS for distinctly different reasons.

Agreed on everything. My one problem is: If Microsoft was to say you could only get Windows on a PC that they produced, like Apple does, they would be back in court with anti-trust up the wazoo.

If Microsoft had originally gone into the hardware business then delivering their OS only on their hardware would probably be fine.

Actually now, if they switched whole-hog into the hardware business but did not use Windows popularity to block competition while driving hardware the hardware brand popularity up; probably no problem either. Anti-competitive law should only come into affect if MS uses it's Windows popularity to strong-arm the consumer into MS only hardware or otherwise block legally fair competition from other hardware vendors.

The issue in the past has been using the popularity of the OS to impose choices on the OEM customers (Dell, HP...) and on the end consumers and to negatively affect the ability for competitors to present alternatives to the consumer (product success should be about the product not the ability to hide alternative choices from the consumer).

There needed to be 2 votes. One for consumer segment and one for the enterprise segment.

For the consumer segment:
Jobs wins:
Just look at the market penetration of iWhatever stuff.
Products designed for the end user
Closed design cycle with very high bar ($$$)for 3rd party entry. Just try and buy a connector for find specs on the ipod interface.

Gates:
MS always playing catch-up on the consumer
Products leveraging open communication methods so easy dilution by 3rd party

For the business segment:

Gates wins:
Does Apple even have a viable end-to-end enterprise solution?
Mac users probably use MSOffice (or a close derriviatve) for their professional correspondence yet other than QuickTime, what Apple written products run on Windows?

Were it not for the Mac OS, you would not be using Windows today. Were it not for Apple's original Apple I desktop, you would not be using a desktop today (nearly all previous desktop 'computers' were little more than enhanced game consoles). Were it not for OS X today, you would not be using Windows 7 (XP was really the best version of Windows until 7). Quite honestly, were it not for Apple, computer technology simply wouldn't be where it is today.

However, Gates was a marketing genius. He started with a cheaply-bought OS created by a fellow student and licensed it to IBM for their pending PC computer, conceived when someone realized that off-the-shelf components could build a simplified stand-alone computer. Interestingly, this concept arrived about 2 years after the original Apple i and about a year after the first retail Apple II hit the market. Because he managed to keep the licensing open and riding on IBM's apron strings, he managed to get a steel toe in the enterprise door that literally dragged Microsoft into desktop dominance.

So just because Microsoft practically owns the enterprise desktop market, it's no proof that they made the better contribution. You, yourself, said that Microsoft is always playing catch up, but it's not just on the consumer market. Were it not for Apple and Jobs' advances, we'd still be stuck in the 80s as far as desktop computing is concerned.

I think Linx based distributions had a lot to do with Windows7. With Vista; Microsoft was hemeraging users to the competition. This is when entrenched Windows users where most likely to consider alternatives. Apple was popular but talk of Ubuntu seems to have really exploded at this time.

Then we have netbooks where Apple would later have the Air; not really competitive hardware, software or price. Linux based distributions became a real threat; a whole new class of PC that Windows couldn't reasonably run on. Suddenly winXP's end of life got expanded, Vista got downlplayed and Win7 got a lot of the QA work lacking prior to Vista release and a price cut (security, stability, UI design) - so it would run on low resource Netbooks, so it slow Linux distro adoption, so it could better compete price wise, so it could attract focus away from Vista's security/stability/support failings.

I do think Apple pushes Microsoft through competition (or pulls them along in terms of the direction ideas seem to flow). In terms of Vista/Win7 though, I don't see Apple as the primary motivation for changes.

Windows '95 copied the 'look and feel' of the 10-year-old Mac OS. Windows '98 came up to the capabilities of Mac OS6, already 5 years old. Win2K roughly equalled Mac OS7 and WinXP roughly matched Mac OS8--when OS X had just hit the market. Vista tried to match OS X--almost 7 years later and Win7 finally came close to that goal.

Yes, Apple drags Windows into the future, but it looks like that rope is beginning to wear thin as Apple gains on Windows' lead.

I sure won't claim that Microsoft hasn't been taking "inspiration" from Apple's OS with each generation. Vista is really where it gets interesting; Vista copied osX copied Gnome copied Kde copied Vista.. depending on whom one asks.

While I can't deny the enormous impact of Bill Gates and Microsoft, I voted for Steve Jobs because the products Apple created have done more (IMO) to integrate technology into our everyday lives. Products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad (I own none of them) were revolutionary, not for their function but for their overall design which captured the interest of many people who would not have considered purchasing an MP3 player, smartphone or tablet PC prior to their introduction. Microsoft and IBM brought computing to the masses, but Apple made technology "cool" as part of our everyday lives away from the computer.

Both of these guys arguably had and continue to have a huge influence on the industry and thus society in general.

If you take a man and blindfold him and put him on an airplane to any random city in the world, and then blindly send him to any business office in that city, there's probably a greater than 90% chance that the information systems that run that business are Microsoft based.

As the leader of Microsoft since inception, the products produced by his company have daily impact on the most people and businesses worldwide, everyday.

For that reason, I place Bill Gates ahead of Steve Jobs.