

Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star? (2006) - terpua
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/01/70072

======
kevbin
Leander Kahney seems to think there's something unethical about building
products, managing an organization, and benefiting from it. The resentful
epithets he throws around (cutthroat capitalist, vengeful nerd, selfish
business goals, greedy capitalist, obscene fortune) are shallow tropes and
stereotypes. No one has any duty to participate in the ridiculous rock-star,
celebutard culture Kahney endorses. The greatest responsibility that "…comes
with great wealth and power…" is restraint. Whether Jobs shows that restraint
through anonymous giving or recalcitrant hoarding doesn't matter to me, his
work speaks for itself. I'm sure he can endure the shame of not meeting
Kahney's childishly conventional ideals.

~~~
mcav
Kahney wrote a book in 2008 called "Inside Steve's Brain". It was very
complimentary toward Steve, presenting his leadership techniques positively.
Good book, and not at all negative as this article might suggest.

------
cwb
Why is the focus on money here? The impact of the technologies they create
dwarfs any monetary contributions. What's the value of their technology on top
of what the obvious sellable product is? That is, how much more valuable is
their product to the user on top of what the obvious product would have been?

It affects some products more than others. Productivity tools have high
leverage, as do protocols and standards, because they are means to ends. End-
user products like food, music, sex (for fun, not reproduction), and housing
tend to have little leverage because they are closer to the ends. That is,
more of them increases wealth.

iPods are good because they let lots of people enjoy more music than before.
However, it is probably on slightly better than the obvious product and in any
case, the possible impact of a media player is limited.

UNIX (or HTTP or C) on the other hand is non-obvious and a fundamental tool
impacting work higher up the value chain. These things have enormous impact on
wealth because of the knock-on effects of the tools and they afford.
Innovation and development is approximately exponential and, rarely mentioned,
prone to get stuck in local maxima. Here be dragons. Would we have as powerful
an Internet if it weren't for a few key UNIX design decisions? What would a
Microsoft designed world-wide computer network look like?

Try this: how much time do you think people spend trying to align things in
PowerPoint that could be made a snap with better tools (maybe 2007 fixes
this)? Let's say 2 min per presentation. With an estimated (by Microsoft) 30
million presentations a day, of which say a tenth are newly created, that
means 6 million minutes, or about 11.5 man years, are wasted. Every day.
Because PowerPoint doesn't make alignment easy. Not to mention that it may
limit people's ideas. What if other Microsoft products have shortcomings more
severe than those in PowerPoint?

Microsoft products often strike me as _worse_ than the obvious product,
prospering because of lock-in/short-sightedness.

By giving his money away, I doubt Gates could ever make up for the value
creation Microsoft has blocked. He would have to find something with enormous
leverage that would otherwise not happen -- don't get your hopes up. Thus,
though I hope he proves us wrong, Gates is down in my book as one of the bad
guys. Things are looking better now, but we've lost years of exponential
innovation. I bet Kurzweil is annoyed.

------
travisjeffery
The view of this writer brings up something that sickens me about philanthropy
and that's doing it just to get the recognition and attention of rather than
giving because you actually want to help someone.

~~~
kevbin
Gates' early philanthropic donations were primarily to higher-ed institutions.
Somewhere along the line he learned that that's among the most regressive,
least effective forms of charity, and shifted his focus to the truly poor and
needy. That convinced me that he was truly interested in helping others and
not just looking for recognition, attention, or improving the MS brand.

~~~
rbanffy
"improving the MS brand."

Keep in mind he also has some investments in biotech too. Giving someone money
in order to allow him to buy your products and prop up your market cap may be
a very profitable form of charity ;-)

~~~
rbanffy
Voted down as what? "inconvenient"?

------
martythemaniak
I don't know if Jobs is well known outside of the computer industry, while
OTOH everybody knows Bill Gates. If BG plays his cards right, he'll likely be
not only widely-known and remembered, but he'll be remembered in a very
positive light as well.

------
rbanffy
One is an artist with lots of personal issues that sometimes show through his
way of doing business (I won't forgive Apple for breaking my TV cable ;-) -
[http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/i-really-want-to-
lik...](http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/i-really-want-to-like-apple)),
the other is a spoiled kid (<http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/>) with a sense of
entitlement (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists>) and a
borderline psychopath white-collar criminal that thinks law does not apply to
him (if you disagree, please watch his DoJ deposition at
<http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=56015>) with delusions that trying hard to
become a philanthropist will make people forget his past.

Do we really need to compare them?

------
jsz0
Being a "star" has almost nothing to do with being a good person. It's
persona. Jobs has a very compelling life story. He approaches his work with
the relentless perfectionism and devotion of an artist. He understands the
value of theatrics and suspense. He's reclusive and arrogant but also
charming. He's simply a more interesting character than Bill Gates who was a
rich kid that went to Harvard and got even richer. I admire what he's doing
with his money now but it doesn't change the fact that he's a boring
character.

------
thenduks
Personally I don't base my opinions of someone on their public support of the
things I support. I like Jobs because I like his products, I couldn't care
less about Gates because I find his products sloppy and awkward to use. Why do
we have to get into a bunch of 'well Gates gave more money to the poor!'
discussions? Not even getting into the issue of Jobs being a very private guy
in general -- why is this any of our business?

