4 ms·

It's hypothetical to say Gates held back innovation. Period. There is no way to arrive on what the world would be now if for e.g Bill didn't create Microsoft. I

It's hypothetical to say Gates held back innovation. Period. There is no way to arrive on what the world would be now if for e.g Bill didn't create Microsoft. I respect Jobs but admire Gates. The fact is, he contributed in making PCs affordable. Yes, the world could have had better technologies if not for Microsoft but you don't know that would have happened. It's always easy to imagine better things but reality is way different. Edit: And I'm surprised by the amount of hate against Bill Gates in HN. We all need to think a minute on what each one of us personally did to make the world better and then opine on Bill Gates. It's easy to hold grudge and hate someone for some hypothetical reasons.

rrohan189 15y ago
agree
fauldsh 15y ago
I have no issue with people hating Gates, but I hate how people mindlessly hate Gates whilst worshipping Jobs. I think there's in an argument that Apple holding back manufacturers through no-competes has a larger negative effect than anything Microsoft did, albeit in different markets.
- mixmastamyk 15y ago
  The difference is between shitty products crowding out competition and great products crowding out competition. Therein lies the axis of opinion I think.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    I think plenty of Apple products are pretty shitty -- though perhaps not always quite as shitty as Microsoft products.
  - bzbarsky 15y ago
    "Great" products preventing even better products from coming to market is no better than shitty products preventing better products from coming to market. And the reason for that is that the goalposts for "great" are very easy to move. Once people see that something is better, they quickly demote the old "great". And that said, Safari on iOS may well be a case of shitty products crowding out competition. Can you get a browser with the stock iOS WebKit but the V8 JS engine on there instead of JavaScriptCore? Nope. Can you get a browser supporting web features that the stock WebKit on iOS doesn't happen to support? Nope. Lots of other things that could be done much better than Mobile Safari.... and yet they can't be, because such apps could not be offered through the Apple app store.
levesque 15y ago
On the love of Jobs vs hate of Gates (or Microsoft), I am currently reading Steve Jobs biography, and I found a passage that highlights Apple as hypocrites quite more efficiently than anything I might say : " The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry. Jobs occasionally endorsed this view, with pride. As he once said, “Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” "
- hyperbovine 15y ago
  Given Jobs' reaction to e.g. Android, that is, in the Apple parlance, "stunning".
  - zobzu 15y ago
    It's all about stuff like "the winner writes history" and "the best marketing/coolest looking guy" too. Obviously Apple and SJobs are far worse than Microsoft and BGates. SJobs has a vision and motivated by it, to do anything to achieve it. BGates is more of an ordinary man. That's why BGates final goal in life is not to "hit android until its dead lying on the floor" but instead "lets donate most money which i dont even need to try to make the world a better place". Fucking hell of a difference if you ask me. Heck, with all their wrongs, current Windows is actually pretty damn good, and Microsoft Research has awesome stuff released every now and then.
    - wriq 15y ago
      "hit android until its dead lying on the floor" You know Microsoft collects nearly a half billion a year from patents relating to android?
      - dpark 15y ago
        You know Bill Gates left Microsoft before the first Android phone shipped?
  - 15y ago
wtallis 15y ago
It sounds like you've never payed much attention to the antitrust actions against Microsoft. Of course it's impossible to say what the world would be like if there had been no Microsoft. It's impossible to make any long-term projections, whether or not they're for an alternate reality. But that doesn't matter, because it works the other way: You can't say that the good done by Microsoft was worth it in the long run, because you don't know what long-term successes they prevented. All we really have to go on are the short-term what-ifs, such as the dozens of times that Microsoft illegally screwed over their competitors and restricted consumer choice. Those aren't hypothetical events, but they did result in at least short-term harm.
- blntechie 15y ago
  I'm aware of Microsoft's anti trust actions and I'm not a fan of their then anti competitive stance. But still BGates, as a person has and been doing some wonderful things and people need to appreciate that instead of mindless hate and not seeing beyond an ideology. And here are the same people who were ridiculing Richard Stallman's comments on Steve Jobs based on his ideology but hate Bill Gates because his company has done some bad in the past and he is against their ideology. I don't see any difference. IMO, if you worship Steve Jobs and hate Bill Gates, it doesn't make any sense. They both are no Gods and they both have done plenty of good and bad.
  - wtallis 15y ago
    Worshiping either Jobs or Gates is silly, and hating Gates requires ignoring his philanthropic work. But I also don't think you should admire Gates unless you think he believes that his riches are at least in part ill-gotten. If he thinks he earned or deserves to be so rich, then he's just a jerk who's now using his money to rehabilitate his public image - a mixed bag not worth using as a role model of good or bad.
  - spacemanaki 15y ago
    I downvoted you because you're throwing everyone in the same bucket of straw men. > They both are no Gods and they both have done plenty of good and bad. Exactly. It's completely possible to be critical of Stallman for his recent poor taste, Jobs for the tightly controlled App Store and iOS, and Gates for abusing Microsoft's monopoly and making software that is (sometimes) shitty. At the same time, it is possible, and not hypocritical, for the same person to admire all three of them for the good and great things they've done. There is no single HN "hivemind" as much as people like to think that there is. There a great many individual voices which you have decided to lump together. I doubt there is seriously anyone on here who literally worships Steve Jobs and actually hates Bill Gates.
rbanffy 15y ago
> he contributed in making PCs affordable Microsoft did nothing like that. Quite the contrary - and since the start of the PC market, by forcing PC makers to license MS-DOS for every unit shipped (not every unit shipped with MS-DOS), they effectively prevented the introduction of a competing operating system. While making prices one OEM license higher. Had IBM never allowed MS-DOS to exist (by signing an exclusive deal), PC clones would probably not exist and, if they did, they would run CP/M 86. 32-bit computers would have arrived sooner, as would 64-bit and RISC. Intel would be happy making non-x86 processors (I can't imagine they really like making their current monstrosities). The personal computer landscape would be much more diverse hardware-wise, (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputers) but, probably, due to pressures from software market, there would be a cross-platform software standard, most probably around POSIX. Microsoft would be making compilers. I wouldn't be a better world from all aspects because Microsoft wouldn't be making the Natural keyboard. edit: other things would be different - the Free Software movement would have a lot less momentum, as there would be no enemy (Microsoft's monopoly) to fight. MSX (once popular outside the US) would have never existed (manufacturers would never gang up to build a standard that would have them competing in price alone in order to enrich a single software company in return)
niels_olson 15y ago
s/if for e.g Bill/if, e.g., Bill/ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/e.g http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/e.g.

rrohan189 15y ago

agree

fauldsh 15y ago

I have no issue with people hating Gates, but I hate how people mindlessly hate Gates whilst worshipping Jobs. I think there's in an argument that Apple holding back manufacturers through no-competes has a larger negative effect than anything Microsoft did, albeit in different markets.

mixmastamyk 15y ago
The difference is between shitty products crowding out competition and great products crowding out competition. Therein lies the axis of opinion I think.
- gnosis 15y ago
  I think plenty of Apple products are pretty shitty -- though perhaps not always quite as shitty as Microsoft products.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  "Great" products preventing even better products from coming to market is no better than shitty products preventing better products from coming to market. And the reason for that is that the goalposts for "great" are very easy to move. Once people see that something is better, they quickly demote the old "great". And that said, Safari on iOS may well be a case of shitty products crowding out competition. Can you get a browser with the stock iOS WebKit but the V8 JS engine on there instead of JavaScriptCore? Nope. Can you get a browser supporting web features that the stock WebKit on iOS doesn't happen to support? Nope. Lots of other things that could be done much better than Mobile Safari.... and yet they can't be, because such apps could not be offered through the Apple app store.

levesque 15y ago

On the love of Jobs vs hate of Gates (or Microsoft), I am currently reading Steve Jobs biography, and I found a passage that highlights Apple as hypocrites quite more efficiently than anything I might say : " The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry. Jobs occasionally endorsed this view, with pride. As he once said, “Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” "

hyperbovine 15y ago
Given Jobs' reaction to e.g. Android, that is, in the Apple parlance, "stunning".
- zobzu 15y ago
  It's all about stuff like "the winner writes history" and "the best marketing/coolest looking guy" too. Obviously Apple and SJobs are far worse than Microsoft and BGates. SJobs has a vision and motivated by it, to do anything to achieve it. BGates is more of an ordinary man. That's why BGates final goal in life is not to "hit android until its dead lying on the floor" but instead "lets donate most money which i dont even need to try to make the world a better place". Fucking hell of a difference if you ask me. Heck, with all their wrongs, current Windows is actually pretty damn good, and Microsoft Research has awesome stuff released every now and then.
  - wriq 15y ago
    "hit android until its dead lying on the floor" You know Microsoft collects nearly a half billion a year from patents relating to android?
    - dpark 15y ago
      You know Bill Gates left Microsoft before the first Android phone shipped?
- 15y ago

wtallis 15y ago

It sounds like you've never payed much attention to the antitrust actions against Microsoft. Of course it's impossible to say what the world would be like if there had been no Microsoft. It's impossible to make any long-term projections, whether or not they're for an alternate reality. But that doesn't matter, because it works the other way: You can't say that the good done by Microsoft was worth it in the long run, because you don't know what long-term successes they prevented. All we really have to go on are the short-term what-ifs, such as the dozens of times that Microsoft illegally screwed over their competitors and restricted consumer choice. Those aren't hypothetical events, but they did result in at least short-term harm.

blntechie 15y ago
I'm aware of Microsoft's anti trust actions and I'm not a fan of their then anti competitive stance. But still BGates, as a person has and been doing some wonderful things and people need to appreciate that instead of mindless hate and not seeing beyond an ideology. And here are the same people who were ridiculing Richard Stallman's comments on Steve Jobs based on his ideology but hate Bill Gates because his company has done some bad in the past and he is against their ideology. I don't see any difference. IMO, if you worship Steve Jobs and hate Bill Gates, it doesn't make any sense. They both are no Gods and they both have done plenty of good and bad.
- wtallis 15y ago
  Worshiping either Jobs or Gates is silly, and hating Gates requires ignoring his philanthropic work. But I also don't think you should admire Gates unless you think he believes that his riches are at least in part ill-gotten. If he thinks he earned or deserves to be so rich, then he's just a jerk who's now using his money to rehabilitate his public image - a mixed bag not worth using as a role model of good or bad.
- spacemanaki 15y ago
  I downvoted you because you're throwing everyone in the same bucket of straw men. > They both are no Gods and they both have done plenty of good and bad. Exactly. It's completely possible to be critical of Stallman for his recent poor taste, Jobs for the tightly controlled App Store and iOS, and Gates for abusing Microsoft's monopoly and making software that is (sometimes) shitty. At the same time, it is possible, and not hypocritical, for the same person to admire all three of them for the good and great things they've done. There is no single HN "hivemind" as much as people like to think that there is. There a great many individual voices which you have decided to lump together. I doubt there is seriously anyone on here who literally worships Steve Jobs and actually hates Bill Gates.

rbanffy 15y ago

> he contributed in making PCs affordable Microsoft did nothing like that. Quite the contrary - and since the start of the PC market, by forcing PC makers to license MS-DOS for every unit shipped (not every unit shipped with MS-DOS), they effectively prevented the introduction of a competing operating system. While making prices one OEM license higher. Had IBM never allowed MS-DOS to exist (by signing an exclusive deal), PC clones would probably not exist and, if they did, they would run CP/M 86. 32-bit computers would have arrived sooner, as would 64-bit and RISC. Intel would be happy making non-x86 processors (I can't imagine they really like making their current monstrosities). The personal computer landscape would be much more diverse hardware-wise, (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputers) but, probably, due to pressures from software market, there would be a cross-platform software standard, most probably around POSIX. Microsoft would be making compilers. I wouldn't be a better world from all aspects because Microsoft wouldn't be making the Natural keyboard. edit: other things would be different - the Free Software movement would have a lot less momentum, as there would be no enemy (Microsoft's monopoly) to fight. MSX (once popular outside the US) would have never existed (manufacturers would never gang up to build a standard that would have them competing in price alone in order to enrich a single software company in return)

niels_olson 15y ago

s/if for e.g Bill/if, e.g., Bill/ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/e.g http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/e.g.