The American Spectator : Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

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Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

By Andrew B. Wilson & Robert O. Skovgard from the December 2011 - January 2012 issue

The hare wins in the end (and gives a far superior speech).

(Page 3 of 4)

GATES'S "INEQUITIES""
In moving from the critical moment in Jobs's speech to that in Gates's, we move (it must be said) from the sublime to the ridiculous. After all the jokiness of his opening, Gates lurches into a seriousness that is hard to take seriously in this passage:

But taking a serious look back…I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world--the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries--but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity--reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

Shame on Harvard for not making Global Inequities 101 part of the core curriculum! The nerdy kid from Seattle had to become a billionaire many times over--had, indeed, to become the world's richest man--before he donned the armor of a knight of philanthropy and went out to do battle against those Awful Inequities.

There is much more drivel along the same lines. Gates speaks in the same language--the language of victimization--that is now heard from the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Only he is slightly to the left of them. He is not just a Ninety-Nine Percenter; he is up there at 99.5 percent:

When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them of them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.

Even for someone who is partly responsible for destroying more than half of his company's market capitalization over the past decade, Gates shows a shocking lack of understanding of free-market capitalism.

"If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians," Gates pontificates, "we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world."

But that is exactly and precisely wrong. Contra Gates, there is no good way to mix generating votes for politicians and generating profits for legitimate businesses. In backward countries ruled by unscrupulous (or monstrous) tyrants, anything that helps to prop up existing government will almost certainly be something that undermines the disciplines and rewards of free enterprise. It will perpetuate bribes and kickbacks and help to ensure that corrupt but politically-favored businesses win out over those that work hard to serve their customers and earn an honest profit.

According to Gates--and this is where we come to the theme of the speech--"The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity."

So, at the end of the day, it is "too much complexity" that is causing all the problems--not corruption…or man's inhumanity to man…or the desire of dictators to do everything they can to increase their power while restricting the freedom of all those they wish to keep in a state of servitude.

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About the Author

Andrew B. Wilson is a freelance writer living in St. Louis.

About the Author

Robert O. Skovgard is an editor and publisher in the executive communications field and founder of the Executive Speaker newsletter.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (73) | Leave a comment

Michael Tomlinson| 1.23.12 @ 6:39AM

Both big libearls who if they weren't hypocrites would give their fortunes to the government. So who cares?

Quartermaster| 1.23.12 @ 6:11PM

Gates has long been an idiot. The Harvard speech is just the latest iteration of his narcissism. He's been this way when Microsoft was in Albuquerque, and it continued when he moved it to Bellevue and they became known as the Bellevue Bandits.

Jobs did borrow ideas from Xerox PARC, but Microsoft was quite slow in doing so. I didn't care for Mac because of the type of work I do, but saw it as a trailblazer that outstripped anything Gates and his bunch did. Jobs out did Gates, but it really didn't take an awful lot to do it.

vb| 1.23.12 @ 7:00AM

I'm glad Gates is spending his own money to improve the world. At least he has a chance to learn from his mistakes. Whether he will is another question.

John786| 1.23.12 @ 7:39AM

Both great men in different ways. But to judge them based on outlandish,endlessly narrowing conservatism is ridiculous. Crazy.

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 7:40AM

Agreed

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 7:39AM

One thing that is not mentioned when recalling the success of these two gentlemen is the factor of luck. Why did Apple and Microsoft go on while Xerox declined?
Perhaps Xerox had forgotten the 'fire in the belly' or the timing that made them initially successful. Once a company gets a focus and the 'professional' bean counters take over their creativity seems to go out the window.
Look at IBM. The powers to be were so dismissive of the PC that they formed a subsidiary to continue the work. After all 3270 emulation in a client server environment on 7094 and 360 main frames was the ONLY way to go. Once free from the 'Corporate Vision' the IBM PC people realized their future was not playing games (aka Commodore et. al.) but with business applications, such as Visacalc.
People who work with numbers went ape when they discovered they could run almost endless 'what ifs' at their desk and not have to wait for mainframe time at night. Did you know that Visacalc was also used as a simple word processor. It gave power to creative minds.
Perhaps that was what made Apple so different. Steve Jobs had a incredibly creative mind. He was always asking 'what if'. To me he was the crazy uncle who kept coming up with new stuff while Bill Gates was more for the business market. I know those are narrow boxes but they seem to work for me.
Another thing Apple was more of a closed environment where the software and hardware were almost indivisible whereas Microsoft was strictly software and initially let IBM worry about the firmware. (Perhaps that is why you need to constantly download updates for your Windows OS.) Apple was a complete system, Microsoft was more loosely goosey designed to run on a variety of platforms, while being more 'flexible' it has also caused much frustration and cussing in the user world.
Bottom line – both men had visions. Both were in the right place at the right time and were therefore successful.
Back to the article, the expression of their visions, and self image, is very evident in the content and form of the two men's presentations before Stanford and Harvard. To me the choice and location of those two Universities is very telling about the men.

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 7:56AM

P.S. yes I know that Visacalc was first released for the Apple II but memory and display restrictions limited its usefulness.

DaveD| 1.23.12 @ 8:29AM

Apple's (Job's ?) decision to remain a closed environment is what almost brought Apple to its knees in the 90's. The more wide open PC environment opened doors to all sorts of basement and garage entrepreneurs and fueled the explosive growth of an inferior platform. This decision makes everybody's top ten list of stupid corporate decisions.

(BTW, it's Visicalc, not Visacalc.)

PJ| 1.23.12 @ 8:37AM

What makes you think that Apple has a superior platform? They both "suck"!

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 11:54AM

Ah - the sounds of Linux user!!!!
I never said Apple was a superior platform, just closed.

John Navratil| 1.23.12 @ 6:21PM

oldfart,

I ran screaming from the Windows XP world about 10 years ago into the world of Linux. (I'd been a Unix programmer since the PDP days, however).

Everyone in my house, my parent's house, my in-laws have gone to Mac for the end-user experience. My wife just loves her iPad.

My own suspicion is that Apple may have peaked. Their closed system is now projected into the app store where you must be blessed to offer your wares and where Joe Lieberman can arm-twist a compliant Steve Jobs into pulling apps. It will be interesting to see how the open/closed model works in the smart-phone world.

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 12:02PM

OPPS

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 2:12PM

What I remember is that the Apple 2 was open. I remember the Honolulu Apple users group having hundreds of people in 1980. There were tables of little inventions by hobbyists who loved being able to take off the top and switch out boards.
Visicalc was invented by MIT profs who made little money on it, but it catapulted the Apple 2 into business. It worked quite well on the Apple 2.
I recommend the miniseries - the Pirates of Silicon Valley, for you better believe that both Jobs and Gates were pirates who didn't mind stealing anything and dare people to sue them. The real creative geniuses were at Xerox parc. They invented window, the mouse and the first all purpose object-oriented language smalltalk. Gates was very slow to realize the power of object-oriented languages and prefered a strategy that IBM had of leading the trailing edge of technology. Jobs meanwhile went to Objective-C (which is still used on the Mac) for the language of the Next computer (the first to allow one to attach pictures to email). Ironically Microsoft has C# today which is object-oriented and a rip-off of Java but still a pretty good language. Neither company has been of fan of open source which is now the dominate player in computers. However IBM is, and it has made a huge comeback. Its been a wild ride in computers, but as far as complexity. Gates needs to take a good look at declarative programming. It is the next big shift after object-oriented programming and capable of handling complexity. Forget the political route.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 9:58PM

minor point...but open source is absolutely no guarantee of secure computing systems development. that is a myth.

TrueBlue| 1.24.12 @ 1:23PM

It's a lot more difficult to hack a system whose parameters aren't known though, which is an advantage of Linux-based systems. They can be developed individually and don't have to be mainstream. Has the downside of not being compatible with a lot of software, but you have ALWAYS had to trade off security for ease of access.

Open source IS a guarentee of secure computing since each system can be individually developed to allow as much, or as, little security as the user wishes, however to actually be fully secure you'd have to never let anybody use it. As soon as you plug the system in and turn the power on now people can figure out how it works and how to break into it.

carnot| 1.24.12 @ 10:32PM

the point I'm making is that the expected "economies of scale" attributable to open source security review has not proven more effective in practice than alternatives. see McGraw and others for similar assertions.

MachiasPrivateer| 1.23.12 @ 7:59AM

Bill Gates and Jack Welch have a lot to answer for, they created MSNBC and debased the news business.

Steve Jobs freely stole intellectual capital from others starting with theft of service boxes made in a garage. Now that he is gone, Google and the "cloud" will eat the Apple.

Sic transit gloria.

Vern Crisler| 1.23.12 @ 9:08AM

I think it's a bit much to use commencement speeches as a way of contrasting two individuals like Gates and Jobs. They both pretty much shared the same leftwing ethos despite the fact that each in his own way have made major contributions as capitalists.

Like I said, conservatives love capitalISM, but not necessarily capitalISTS.

Todd S| 1.23.12 @ 10:10AM

One interesting difference between them is that Gates seems to feel rather guilty about the fortune he made and the bad press that came with it from the liberal press, hence his speech at Harvard giving homage to every liberal platitude whether grounded in reality or not. His charitable endeavors are bound to cause more problems than they solved you can guarantee, left wing social engineering always does.

Steve Jobs on the other hand never gave a damn about being called a greedy heartless capitalist. In fact when he returned to Apple, he eliminated all charitable contributions made by Apple as he saw no purpose to it. Apple existed for one reason only in his mind, to make great products. You can bet he got crap about this by the Apple PR people and his Board of Directors (Al Gore no doubt was bugging him for money to support his global warming charade) but he told them to stuff it. That is the kind of capitalist I like, charity is for individuals and not an exercise in PR. That is why he could give a speech like he did at Stanford which was honest at its core and Gates gives his speech at Harvard which was dishonest at its core.

Renaissance Nerd| 1.23.12 @ 10:23AM

You're so right about corporate charity. Every time I see a commercial about how nobly some company is in giving away money I want to stop buying their products at once. I don't mind them donating money--just advertising it, or worst of all, offering to donate if you buy something. Ugh.

Todd S| 1.23.12 @ 11:07AM

BP and GE come to mind when they advertise how they are so concerned about the environment and are doing their best to save the world, just bullshit. Sadly Exxon decided they had to play the game and advertise their "green" energy initiatives instead of standing up for their business model and producing real energy the world needs.

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 12:07PM

It is also cheaper to pander to the eco-freaks than fight them.
And being 'green' (what ever the hell that means) makes for higher profits.
Side bar - I get sick of 'green' 'save the planet' blah blah blah - these have become TRITE marketing phrases to pander to people that are the finest product of our public non-education - nothing more.

Todd S| 1.23.12 @ 12:57PM

Makes for higher profits if the government subsidizes it like it does for GE and gives them every tax break imaginable. If we wanted to get rid of the corporatist mentality infecting big business, all subsidies should be eliminated and there should be no corporate tax or at least reduced greatly. Pigs will fly first though unfortunately, too many vested interests in DC for that to ever happen.

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 2:17PM

Gates was driven by fear that some startup would replace his Windows (which really held back computing for decades). Google finally came along and had more to do with the demise of Microsoft than Apple.
But beware of Google.

Die Fledermaus| 1.24.12 @ 6:40PM

oldfart, they were trite marketing phrases designed to pander to people even when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's.

Back then the keyword was "eco" and the big campaign was "Pitch In". I guess litter was the big bugaboo then.

PolishKnight| 1.23.12 @ 9:41AM

Much of the observations above about the success of MS vs Apple are correct but boil down to this:

Apple: Job's genuis was "stealing" Xerox's GUI.
MS: Gates resold an OS to IBM because of his mother's connections.

It's as simple as that. Jobs made a number of mistakes (including letting Gates "steal" the GUI from him!) but made many innovations since then. Gates just had to rest on his laurels and let corporates write checks to him because they loved IBM and later didn't want to put something as silly named as "Apple" on their corporate desks.

Even now, I see some companies in love with IBM. Don't know why, but they will happily cut checks for 4X the amount that they would pay for a smaller company so Apple's control of the hardware isn't the total reason for failure. I think the secret is IBM taking out corporate executives to lavish golf outings and hiring relatives of corporate buyers.

Renaissance Nerd| 1.23.12 @ 10:30AM

At a company I used to work for IBM gave all of the VPs Porches so they would use their network cabling/NICs instead of Ethernet. It was horrible stuff, 3-4x more expensive for 16Mb instead of 100Mb Ethernet. I can't even remember the name of the standard now, but everybody in the IT department was really peeved about it. $600 for a NIC in 1998, when Ethernet cards were about $150. It's too bad we nerds aren't (as a rule) very good leaders. Non-nerds make all the tech decisions and flub it 9x out of 10.

oldfart| 1.23.12 @ 12:11PM

Are you refering to 'token ring'?
That was one crappy system. The only advantage, at the time, is that the network was less prone to crashing on token ring than ethernet because the computers of the time were so slow that a ethernet network could get confused on where the pack had come from or where it was going.

PolishKnight| 1.23.12 @ 3:22PM

Probably. Thin-net (which is similar) was a more open architecture. The appeal of token-ring and thin-net was that no hub was required and cabling to each host and in the old days, hubs were expensive.

But 1998 buying token ring for an enterprise level infrastructure? No WONDER they had to buy the VP's porsches! IBM probably was clearing out their warehouse of that stuff from the 80's!!!

My experience working IT tech support was that IBM blamed us whenever something went wrong and if you called their 800 number they would make you run through hoops before fixing something (this was for high priced platinum support!) Yep, corporate America at it's finest!

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 10:04PM

cmon now...Apple didn't claim market for a long time starting in the late 80s and early 90s simply because the machines were too expensive relative to the competition.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 10:04PM

...market share....

Minuteman78| 1.23.12 @ 10:05AM

The kingpin of Microsoft (the poster child for bug-ridden, bloated, inefficient software) lecturing the world that things are "too complex"? Oh, that's rich, that's going to make the I.T. staff here laugh loud and long...

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 2:21PM

True buried deep within Windows remained MSDOS. I always hated MSDOS. Also the annoying operating system easily allows one to copy a file over another one (no versioning) thus causing you to lose that file. People still get burned by that "feature".
Unfortunately the far superior - Genera operating system never took off. In technology it is not always the best that wins. Anyone who worked on the Symbolics computer in the 80's can tell you that.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 10:11PM

well...it would have been nice had MS elected to avail itself of all the security x86 chips offered rather than settling for a two ring structure predicated entirely on paging. MS opted for a simpler user/kernel structure with all sorts of holes in its system call architecture. they've the better part of the last decade and a half making up for what still persists as security holes in their architecture. all these popular OSs....btw.....are complex to the degree that it is nearly impossible (from a combinatorial pov) to trace/discover every every security flaw. there are better and worse design models.....but the mathematical complexity itself almost guarantees recurring zero days.

russel| 1.23.12 @ 10:43AM

" Gates has never surprised or delighted his customers. Instead, he has kept them in more of a hammerlock--forced to accept succeeding generations of uninspired software with many annoying features. " . Precisely why I can't stand him ; he has a monopoly that forces users into never ending expenditures . More so is that he was as crooked as they come building his empire . He stole inventions and lied about it . He had no talent except theft . In short - a lazy half-assed yuppie . Bah on his ' success '.

Seek| 1.23.12 @ 12:54PM

If it's so easy, surely you can do things better. Right?

Tim the Enchanter| 1.23.12 @ 1:15PM

Linus Torvald did!

Renaissance Nerd| 1.23.12 @ 10:45AM

I've always admired Jobs, despite his many eccentricities and weird politics. Gates not so much. Douglas Adams called him right (IMO):
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers our of a mire of techonological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."

I'm writing this on a Win7 machine, and I have a Mac too--I'd give them both up in a minute if somebody came up with a better OS. I've worked on Linux, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, etc, and several guis for each (GNOME double-UGH!!), and I like Mac best of the bunch, but it could be so much better. Win7 has caught up to OSX.2 I reckon, but it's still ugly and clunky until I modify the heck out of it. I keep hoping somebody is working on a new paradigm for GUIs in their basement somewhere and it'll break out like a virus any time now. NOT holding my breath.

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 2:27PM

Ever get a chance, read up on Genera. It was written by boy genius Howard Cannon of Symbolics. It was the first fully object oriented operating system written in Flavors (a Lisp dialect). Its editor was Emacs. It had no linker and allowed incremental compilation so that you could sit on a life system and replace a method with a meta-x add patch. I still miss the machines, and would love genera on my PC.

Loudoun Lady| 1.23.12 @ 11:51AM

Excellent commentary! I am reading Jobs' biography and it is extremely interesting , I had no idea that he was an acid-dropping, guru seeking hippy, but am not at all surprised. The best part of the book is the task that Jobs bequeathed to the author - unfettered access to his friends, family and enemies, and the faith that although he would not be around to see the reaction to this book - he would be judged fairly on his life.

Bravo on an excellent comparison of 2 very interesting men.

Buck Ofama| 1.23.12 @ 11:55AM

who cares...

Mister Grady| 1.23.12 @ 2:32PM

There's always lots of ignorance when it comes to Apple's history as an innovator.

Apple stole nothing from Xerox. NOTHING!

Apple had already been working on a GUI when they visited Xerox. They LICENSED (not stole) some of Xerox' interface elements, as well as their mouse.

The original Mac OS was NOT merely the PARC interface. It went well beyond that. This is well documented, though many choose to ignore this very basic fact. The original Mac interface was an Apple invention, with some elements LICENSED from Xerox. The PARC design and the Mac design did NOT work the same.

What's more is that the PARC system had a six figure price tag. Apple innovated their system in such a way to make it available for just a few thousand dollars.

The original PARC mouse was also cost prohibitive, and SJ and charged his engineers with making it a lot less expensive and a lot more durable - which they did.

Bill Gates's supposedly clever retort leaves out the fact that Apple didn't steal any television set. Apple PURCHASED (not stole) a few parts of a television set to shorten their timeline, then continued their innovations to finish the TV set on which they had already been working. And then Bill Gates came along, stole Apple's television set, dismantled it and put it back together wrongly enough in a lame attempt to disguise it (fooling only the uninitiated), and then made huge amounts of money from their theft, which ignorant people to this day continue to excuse.

Meanwhile, Apple's innovations continued. WYSIWYG was next, and then more and more and more... these Apple innovations being used and enjoyed by many of the same people that hate the very company that made those things possible.

Hypocrisy, thy name is... average Windows user.

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 3:01PM

"Apple had already been working on a GUI when they visited Xerox. They LICENSED (not stole) some of Xerox' interface elements, as well as their mouse."

No Jobs stole it honestly. He also hired away many of the Parc people. He knew the value, Xerox did not. It was good for us. Jobs didn't use the smalltalk either.

PolishKnight| 1.23.12 @ 3:28PM

In an old closet at my company they have tons of old computer stuff going back to the 70's that just didn't get thrown out. One of them was an optical mouse going back to the very early 80's. So the concept of a mouse wasn't new although Apple innovated in a number of ways on how it was deployed.

Regarding smalltalk: I used it at my house in the early 1990's. Although it wasn't as good at the new fangled ethernet or even thinnet, it was "free" and many students used it to get networks up via their PLUMBING at their dorms. Pretty cool. You could use a standard RJ11 telephone jack (which is worthless nowadays since what dinosaurs now use a landline? :-)

Mister Grady| 1.23.12 @ 3:23PM

Geez, Pete, but you are really, really very stupid.

It is a matter of contractual record that yes, Apple, did, in fact, LICENSE - NOT STEAL - ONE DAMN THING FROM XEROX.

Are you being obtuse for a deliberate reason, or are you really just that way?

Good grief, the mythologies that some people cling to...

And by the way, if you spout that same mythology, then you are actively and deliberately a liar.

PERIOD!

I am still waiting for Xerox to sue Apple for "stealing" their IP. Why has that never happened. Enquiring minds want to know.

I gave you FACTS...and you replied with nothing more than gainsaying.

Grow up, Windows shitwit!

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 8:01PM

Mister Grady, I was praising Jobs for understanding the value of what Parc had. You need to lighten up a bit.
Windows shitwit, wow you could not be further from the truth. My first computer was an Apple 2 (though I also had a Franklin which Jobs would not like). I have a MacBook today. My favorite computer was a Symbolics, but they are not around today. I have not all that keen or Unix (or Linux). Windows I have never liked. Problem was that MSDOS it was built upon.
Now watch the Pirates of Silicon Valley and you will understand what I meant by "steal". Its actually admiration.

Kingofthenet| 1.23.12 @ 4:02PM

I am sorry, I don't need to be 'Delighted' by paying 3-4x for a Brand name. My Dell XPS runs rings around most Apple Computers and cost me $750. People might remember Jobs salesmanship, but he was a small person that didn't care about the Poor or anything else but money.

Todd S| 1.23.12 @ 5:56PM

Jobs contributed more to society than every democrat politician in DC put together. One hundred years from now Steve Jobs will still be a legend while Obama will be a sorry footnote like Jimmy Carter who made the United States a worse place to live. I know Obama must really care about the poor, that is why he has created so many of them.

Kingofthenet| 1.23.12 @ 6:13PM

Than you must Worship Billy Mays, I tell you his made for sale on TV products were AMAZING...even when they weren't.

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 8:04PM

After 3 straight PC laptops that lasted 2 years each, I gladly switched to a MacBook. The software that comes with it alone made a computer fun once again and its on its third year and I bet I get 4 more years from it. And speed. It is much faster than the brand new PC I have for work. Nope the money was worth it.

Mister Grady| 1.23.12 @ 4:22PM

KingoftheNet,

No, your POS Dell does not run rings around ANY Apple computer. You speak in ignorance.

And no, Apple computers are not more expensive than PC hunks of junk. It's just that Apple does not offer anything at the low end.

And again, entering well documented territory which some choose ignore, when you start trying to equip a Dell or other similar hunk of junk to match an Apple computer, you find that there are no savings to buying the off-brand POS. And since Macs don't suffer the legendary maintenance and usability downtime of PC's, they're actually a better buy for your money in the long run.

But I know, I know....PC people willingly choose to live in ignorance. And they suffer for it, too.

I'd love to have a side by side contest with a Dell person some time and ram their "I can run circles around a Mac" nonsense back down their throat where it belongs.

Kingofthenet| 1.23.12 @ 5:15PM

OK you Want to go Hi End here are the spec of two $2,500 computers, first the Apple macbook 'Pro':
17" MacBook Pro quad-core Intel Core i7 2.4GHz, 4GB DDR3, 750GB HD, Intel HD Graphics 3000 & AMD Radeon HD 6770M, SuperDrive, Thunderbolt port, Gigabit Ethernet, FaceTime HD camera, Aluminum unibody

Than the PC:

GT783-625US
• Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit
• 17.3" Full HD Anti-reflective Display (16:9; 1920 x 1080)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M discrete graphics (DDR5 2.0GB VRAM)
• Accelerated performance with MSI TDE Technology
• Full-color programmable backlit keyboard by SteelSeries
• MSI Cooler Boost Technology
• Dynaudio Premium Speakers w/ Subwoofer
• 128GB SSD + 750GB HDD(7200 RPM)
• 16GB DDR3 system memory
• Blu-ray Disc burner
• USB 3.0 for high speed data transfer
• HDMI 1.4 (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) output
• Built-in 720p HD webcam
• Built-in 802.11b/g/n WLAN Card

The PC blows the doors off the Apple

Pete| 1.23.12 @ 8:06PM

I bet its slower, doesn't have garageband and still uses that crappy windows.

lhs63| 1.23.12 @ 8:26PM

Ah. The only debate fiercer than conservative vs. liberal ... Mac vs PC.

Bill Jobs Lewinsky| 1.23.12 @ 10:59PM

Buncha dorks.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 11:10PM

and total dominance on bugtraq to boot!

The Bruce| 1.24.12 @ 2:12AM

Um, Grady, my Linux machines run circles around (in performance) my much newer Macs (partially Linux based) and PCs (Win 7) machines.

I wouldn't even own Win/Apple machines if it weren't for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions that both of those companies place on me, just to do something like view Netflix or Blu-Ray discs.

Janis| 1.23.12 @ 8:08PM

Would not trade my PC or Windows Phone for anything Apple.

I tell people an Apple product is like buying a DeLoren and expecting it to go somewhere. It is pretty on the outside but does nothing.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 11:12PM

market share would seem to indicate otherwise....but these things do vary!

POST American| 1.23.12 @ 9:08PM

---------------------FINAL WORD----------------------

We'll bet, some day, maybe 20 years from
now, it will be revealed Jobs was
'selected' and 'brought in' years and years
before he ever set his sights on computers.

It was painful to watch the dying Jobs
refuse to deal with the reality of the
RED China economic, indeed, full-spectrum,
TREASON OP ----or his own company's
complicity in labor abuse in that ever
put upon country.

Never once did he call for a universal
labor wage standard --that, BTW,
would solve our problem
of competing with RED China.

Jobs's silence on, and, we have to assume,
involvement with the deadly EUGENICS
agenda is even more disturbing.

As for his family's inter-generational links
to the ever sinister Rockefellers, and Micro-
soft's day one links to DARPA and the
NSA ----what can decent humanity say?

-------------ENJOY THOSE INJECTIONS!-----------

---------------------------as HELL is coming. . .

POST American| 1.23.12 @ 9:10PM

-------------------CORRECTION----------------------

Final paragraph, 'As for' ----deleted
GATES --ie the Gates family.

Sorry about that

CraigNotGreg| 1.23.12 @ 9:40PM

Jobs's speech was clearly superior but Gates's speech wasn't nearly as bad as you made it out to be. Your criticism of Gates's speech and your skepticism of his motives for making it came across as petty and cynical.

POST American| 1.23.12 @ 9:50PM

-------------------BOTTOM LINE----------------------

"Among the American indians, the very
act of couting was reckoned a sadistic
act. And as every red indian knows,
'charity' is the white man's most insidious
poison."
D H Lawrence

Rockefeller linked, NSA set up,
inter-generational EUGENIST
Bill Gates, and monomaniac enabler
Steve Jobs, are case in point.

The ruthless Globalist RED China
economic transfer and full spectrum
TREASON OP --remains the over-awing
issue of the century.

-------USURY remains ABOMINATION-------

Unaccountable capstone USURY, even
when it 'seems' to be working and dynamic
---creates deviant economy.

------EUGENICS remains its ultimate aim-------

Those who serve it ---will face the TRUE
beyond the BLUE one day.

------------------------------REST ASSURED.

carnot| 1.23.12 @ 10:18PM

there was an interesting story floating around in tight Navy IT circles in the late 90s that Gates (with financial officer in tow) met with the CNO to discuss a vexing problem at the time that dealt with Exchange naming standards that prevented automated sharing of GALs once a server crashed and had to be completely restored. rumor has it that MS had engineered a script for a customer to circumvent the problem. CNO...at the behest of his advisors...spoke to Gates about this and some other much larger issues. rumor has it Gates turned to his financial officer and asked "What percentage of total revenues does Navy account for?" and smiled. true? don't know.

BackToBasics| 1.24.12 @ 1:07AM

From the article - quoting Gates - "The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much COMPLEXITY."......."I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue--a COMPLEX problem"

Seems like bad advice if you believe too much complexity is the problem.

The author is right, this speech seems like one done by committee.

Yet, from what I've read and heard, Jobs was more inclined to be straight to the point, even when not necessary.

Each one has or had his strengths and weaknesses and their companies no doubt reflect each man to a large extent. It is interesting to note that the more reclusive and remote Jobs had the more "closed" software and products whereas Gates is more open and committee-minded and his products are more "open" and also reflect his own personality. Each man and the products they helped create have their strengths and weaknesses. It is capitalism, warts and all; but it is still better than communism which is the political direction our nation has been heading.

carnot| 1.24.12 @ 7:28AM

of course...you know that some of the best hackers in the world come from Russia and..at one time....Bulgaria. China seems to have developed some adeptness as well......

BackToBasics| 1.24.12 @ 5:00PM

You imply only weakness but they both developed companies that made products, though imperfect, that have made life better for millions and spun off many new businesses as a result. You can make the argument that the operating systems and security could have been made more foolproof, but that isn't what happened. Though imperfect, both men and their companies have in the balance made our lives more better than not.

carnot| 1.24.12 @ 10:37PM

maybe. either way I do know your summary handwave ignores a lot of facts. for example, the estimated value of global cybercrime exceeded the estimated value for the global drug trade in 2006. there have been HUGE costs.

BackToBasics| 1.25.12 @ 11:25PM

You rightly mention more specifically some of the negatives. I think a lot of people would like to rewrite the history of these 2 men and their companies if they could. I wasn't so much taking sides in the Jobs vs. Gates debate as I was just looking at it from a perspective more of their personalities. There sure seemed to be a lot going on there between them. I wonder if Jobs would have been so inventive in his comeback if he didn't have Gates for a foil?

I more emphasized the positive because I know more about it and because I am so thankful for how networks and airwaves have allowed everyday people to socialize and share ideas together. It has not only created many jobs, businesses, opportunities and social contacts (I refer to the positive ones in my life at least) but also how, so far anyway, it acts as a moderate firewall against government oppression and enslavement.

I fear the day, if it yet comes, when the government and it's media accomplices, regain enough control of the networks in an attempt to enslave us. For some reason I have yet to figure out, other than perhaps DEEP insecurities, power-hungry people who ultimately make it to the top of the political food chain always want to control as many people as they can.

The Bruce| 1.24.12 @ 2:03AM

"Jobs worried and raged that Microsoft as an Apple supplier had been stealing Apple's pioneering and user-friendly technology in this area."

Apple didn't "pioneer" the idea of a graphical user-interface. Xerox has that honor with XPARC. The problem was that Xerox wanted to charge $20K per license for that "honor."

Jobs and Gates took a good idea, from a computing standpoint, and marketed it into something that the "little people" could digest.

carnot| 1.24.12 @ 7:32AM

nonsense. that's like saying GM took Ford's good idea for a car and marketed it better. Apple/MS leveraged a technology idea, true, vastly improved it...and more importantly....productionized it. you're over-trivialzing the matter.