The Greatness of Bill Gates

[erpowers]

A few days ago Bill Gates announced that he was gradually going to give up responsibility of his company and focus more time on his charity. At that time news reporters began to talk about how great Bill Gates was or is. At least one person claimed that without Gates we would not have the internet and some other things related to the computer. Do any of the members of DU think the media is over stating Gates' importance. A few years ago one of my teachers said that when Windows first came out people used to joke that windows 3.1 was just and updated version of Apple's operating system. So if it is true that Gates just stole Steve Job's idea and made it a little better(some people believe Apple computers are actually better than PC's) it seems that Gates is not the genius some people claim he is. So what do Ders think?

[lostinacause]

1. At the very least Gates made some very good business decisions.

[smtpgirl]

2. Bill Gates built Windows on DOS

He is a seller, not a inventor!!!

[Avalux]

3. However he's done it, Gates is swimming in money.

And if he wants to focus on his charities and use his money to help others less fortunate, good for him. It's a lot more than others do with more than they can spend.

[billbuckhead]

4. Modern internet was invented on a NeXT computer--Steve Jobs strikes again

Web Inventor Likes Apple

Berners-Lee looks forward to more online innovation, voices one regret.

Simon Jary, Macworld.co.uk
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
LONDON -- World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has disclosed that he crafted his creation on a NeXT workstation--and he demonstrated an affection for Apple as well.

The technologist presented a lecture at the Royal Society here on Monday using Apple's OS X Web browser Safari on a PowerBook, and referencing the Web's potential through the possibilities of ICal, Apple's calendar program.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, and has been at the forefront of inquiry and discovery since its foundation in 1660.
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<http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112618,00.asp>

[Hippo_Tron]

5. Bill Gates knew how to sell his product

PCs have always been more affordable than MACs and back when computers were really expensive that was a big deal. He knew how to use his operating system to encourage people to buy his other products. I'd say that while he's a smart computer programmer, his real genius is in business.

[bigmonkey]

6. He's been great at one thing - Marketing.

Other than that he's stolen or bought all the "innovations" that people give him credit for. The fact that a lot of people can't tell the difference between the Windows operating system and the computer isn't just ignorance, it's the effect of a long-standing effort on Gates' and Microsoft's part. It's as if they've branded computer science, which is not a good thing. We don't argue about which "version" of physics or chemistry to use, do we?

I will say for him that at least he's getting into the philanthropy thing early enough to do some good. I understand he's studied Andrew Carnegie's life (now there was another right bastard), and he's trying to avoid the disappointment that Carnegie had when his life ran out before his philanthropic intentions had a chance to have an effect.

[Triana]

7. We'd still have the internet without Gates..

...they're overglorifying him. But it's the lamestream media. They always sensationalize everything. Overglorify, or over or understate things, or over demonize. It's what they do best.

Like flies around dead carcass, so are the lamestream media. God I hate them.

[lectrobyte]

8. Say what you want about the technology, but I have to admire

their determination, scary though it may be at times. When Wordperfect was king of all word processors, they (MS) didn't give up on Word like some other companies might have in a similar place.

[zalinda]

14. The only reason Word is the "standard" instead of Word Perfect

is because of MS strong arm tactics. I worked for a computer store at the time, and if you wanted Windows at a competitive price you HAD to put all the MS programs on the computer too and sell it as a bundled machine. If you wanted Word Perfect, you had to pay extra for it. And, as a customer, that didn't make sense. They did away with DBase and Lotus, the same way. Gates didn't innovate anything, he didn't even originate DOS.

He put a lot of businesses out of business and squashed a lot of innovation or bought them out. I don't like him or what he's done. His actions now, is like he's trying to buy his way into heaven, after putting so many people through hell.

When anyone says they admire him, I squirm, it's like admiring a mafia boss.

zalinda

[Selatius]

9. I'm sorry, but monopolists shouldn't be glorified

If you believe in the concept of healthy competition, then Microsoft would have been dismembered as a monopolistic enterprise a long time ago.

[Wetzelbill]

10. as a supporter of TRIPS

which is the writing of intellectual property into trade deals, Gate's philanthropy is dwarfed by the damage something like this does. So I do not know much about his greatness in terms of the internet and Windows etc, but I do think say his greatness as a philanthropist is marred by his support of TRIPS.

[Greyhound]

11. He is a genius in much the same vein as KKKarl Rove.

He is very good at deception and deceit combined with an apparent lack of scruples.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. There was Internet before Gates. And there still would be a popular,

widespread internet with PC's at home with or without Gates and Jobs. It may not have happened as quickly or look the same, but it would have happened.

Jobs/Wozniak and Apple didn't invent the first PCs, but the Apple II started to really make it popular.

After the Mac, the power of IBM, and "open architecture", was harnessed to make cheap "clone" PCs which fueled another wave of huge expansion and PC popularity.

Gates himself did NOT contribute any fundamental invention, either machinery wise (like Wozniak) or software wise, to the thing.

His main contribution was to recognize, in advance, that personal computing would be a huge thing, and to successfully create a relative monopoly on software for them.

The software is not particularly great. The business acumen in creating this situation was.

On Edit:

A lot of this "genius" stuff has less to do with creating the actual computers and software (the key interface and mouse/pointer design elements fundamental to the original Mac and current Windows was not invented by Apple but in Xerox corp, of all places), but the people involved recognizing the importance of what others had and did.

Gates recognized that PCs would be the next huge thing, and wanted a piece of all the software written for them, and has largely realized that.

Jobs recognized this also... he also recognized the revolutionary power of the Xerox Parc design elements of mouse and graphic user interface that is fundamental to how we interact with our PCs now, for the most part.

[carolinalady]

13. Bill Gates has billions, but he also gives billions to those that

need it. You do not see that among all the rich people. Hell if the superstars that put on these famous "telethons" for the cause of the day just shut up and opened their wallets a little wider, the money would be raised in 5 minutes. I respect the Gates family for their philanthropic contributions.

[snot]

15. What Gates is good at is antitrust violations &

sharp business practices. He used these to destroy Netscape, the most popular internet browser long before MS got into it.

I don't know anyone who knows much about MS vs. Apple systems who doesn't consider Apple vastly superior.

Yes, it's true, Windows merely mimicked the "desktop" interface Apple had begun using 10 years earlier--and still wasn't as good as Apple.

Apples have always: rarely crashed, interfaced smoothly with other applications, been user-friendly, etc.

Word was that MS deliberately filled their software with crap, so it would take up as much space as possible on your hard drive, so you'd be forced to get a bigger computer.

Apples have historically been a bit more expensive. It was SO worth it in terms of man-hours NOT lost in the kind of futile, frustrating struggles you face in getting MS products to work.

Y2K was a TOTAL non-event for Apples. It wasn't a problem, because dating was handled correctly from the get-go. No patch required.

The business world, which mainly relied on MS products, was forced to spend billions in order to cope with Y2K. This created a bubble in tech stocks, which subsequently burst in a crash that had severe consequences for the stock market and the economy.

There's a reason Apple users LOVE LOVE LOVE their computers.

[applegrove]

16. He did start the basic program for IBM computers. Then he improved

it with other people's concepts on what user friendly is (not the same thing as code jockeys would like). Think of Apple as technical innovation. And everyone followed. Not just Bill.

Less interested in that..than the lives he will save with his investment in research to ignored diseases.

And when global warming does happen, and the South in the USA becomes tropical.. you all can buy those drugs too!