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I apologize for not being entirely on-topic, but I don't understand why people have the perception that "Steve's a great guy," as the article says. He always s

I apologize for not being entirely on-topic, but I don't understand why people have the perception that "Steve's a great guy," as the article says. He always seemed like a jerk compared to Bill Gates.* More or less I agree with Wired commentary's assessment: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/01/70072 http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/0... * And who else could we compare him to? (Thats not rhetorical, I'd enjoy some replies on the subject. Perhaps Woz?)

loltrader 17y ago
Agreed. I've always thought he's a douche bag.
jacquesm 17y ago
Compared to Woz both Steve and Bill are jerks.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  Compared to Woz, most people are jerks.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    True, but we're comparing made it big software guys here, and there are not that many of those. Steve Wozniak is a genuinely nice person from just about every story that is told about him. Gates, Jobs and plenty of others from his generation that made it big had just the same opportunities to give as much as they took. And they let those opportunities slide, that's why I think the comparison is a meaningful one. To compare Steve Wozniak to the cornerstore grocer is not very productive. That's comparing apples (pun intended, twice) with organges.
  - satyajit 17y ago
    Weird stmt. Its like saying 'Compared to Ferrari, most cars are piece of junk'!
spitfire 17y ago
The difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs isn't actively trying to HURT others through illegal and unethical business practices. Gates' company has been found guilty of this a number of times. Steve just makes his products and if someone wants to play in his sandbox they play by his rules. He may be a dick to work with, but he isn't actively hurting others. And no, I wouldn't say making some donations - no matter the amount, makes up for past actions.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That's very true. The lawsuit that got swept under the carpet should have gone through and it probably would have led to some serious sanctions against ms. There is no way that Gates would have been able to deny knowledge of all the stuff they were doing that was clearly illegal. Earlier today there was a thread about possible tainting of the bing serps by microsoft, one of their employees did his very best to make it clear that they have changed their attitude. I salute the man for his upright position on this, if everybody there would be like that it would be a different story altogether, but it is going to be a long long time before I'm going to give microsoft the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. The road behind is literally littered with the corpses of companies that came under the tank, and a good portion of those did not do anything to deserve the treatment they got.
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  This is kind of absurd in its lack of even-handedness. I'm no expert on the history of these two men and the histories of their companies, but to say that Gates and MS have actively tried to hurt others whereas Jobs and Apple haven't would appear to reveal a serious pro-Apple bias. First, lack of a conviction for anti-competitive behavior doesn't imply that Apple's not actively trying to hurt competitors or consumers. It just means they haven't done anything bad enough to warrant the government getting involved yet. But more than that, I'm not sure we should even care about convictions. I think every major company tries to create an environment in which they have the best chance of success. A lot of times they do things that are anti-competitive and harm consumers in order to create that environment. And a lot of times those things slip under the radar. I think this article does a great job of describing some of what Apple has been doing in that regard with iTunes and the App Store. And to pretend that Apple's recent actions haven't actively hurt other companies and even its own customers is ridiculous. Finally, the statement that "Steve just makes his products and if someone wants to play in his sandbox they play by his rules" could just as well be applied to Gates. But if I were to make such a statement most people Apple fans would flip out. So Steve "just makes" this personal music management software that everyone loves which is great, and then says oh wait, if you want to use it to sync with a portable music device you can only do it with our product. Way back Gates "just made" this operating system that everyone loved which was great, and then said oh wait, if you want to surf the web you'll have to do it with our product (that wasn't even the restriction, which is yet another absurdity of this comparison). Somehow otherwise intelligent people magically dismiss the former as Jobs just exerting his right to dictate the terms on which you can use his products, while considering the latter massively anti-competitive behavior. Someone please explain what's going on.
axod 17y ago
Steve Jobs seems to have a knack for correctly recognizing what most people will find beautiful, and making it happen :/ I don't really care if he's a jerk or not, and I don't really find the article convincing TBH. Bill Gates has done more to hold back progress of software than anyone else. Giving some money to charity doesn't really suddenly make things fine again.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  "Giving some money to charity doesn't really suddenly make things fine again." The kinds of things that Gates are working on now are arguably more important than the rate of progress in software. Like preventing easily preventable diseases in third world countries.
- zaidf 17y ago
  Bill Gates has done more to hold back progress of software than anyone else. At least he never created a Windows Store, like, you know, Steve Jobs. I say this as someone who greatly admires Jobs and watches his Stanford speech for inspiration often. But as far as not holding back progress, Steve Jobs isn't whole lot better than Microsoft.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Second that. If Jobs would have had the opportunity to create a lock in like microsoft had/has on the desktop market he would have done it in a heartbeat. The guy is an amazing business man and an inspiration to many but I doubt they're ever going to name some ethics prize after him.
- corntoole 17y ago
  I have to disagree with the statement that Gates has done so much to hold back software. Some of the best minds in computing still are @ Microsoft Research. MSFT pours billions into basic and applied computer science research. If you say that Gates is very much responsible for the stagnation of software development, than you could blame Jobs just as much if not more b/c Jobs was the one who led the charge in making computing a pop culture when he saw the Xerox PC, decided to build the Mac, but missed some of the really cool ideas behind it.
scythe 17y ago
Eric Schmidt and Scott McNealy are the trivial ones, I guess, though Sun never got into the consumer market. Perhaps Shuttleworth?
jaymon 17y ago
I had a professor that was instrumental in creating the IEEE floating point standard (or something like that, I don't quite remember) and was heavily recruited by Apple back in the day, so heavily in fact that Steve Jobs personally took him and his wife out to dinner. His wife disliked Steve so bad that after the dinner she refused to let him even consider the job with Apple. Just a little anecdote about Steve Jobs that I always found funny and remembered.
- cakesy 17y ago
  That could be a huge compliment to the guy, depending on his wife. At least with some of the wives I have known.
- staunch 17y ago
  I've met people I thought were assholes at first. People I've become friends with have told me they thought I was an asshole at first. First impressions are exactly that.
  - mhartl 17y ago
    True, but with Steve Jobs it goes beyond that: from innumerable accounts by people who have known or met him, it's clear that Jobs is an asshole based not just on a first impression, but on an nth impression for all values of n.
shiranaihito 17y ago
He always seemed like a jerk compared to Bill Gates. Jobs may be a jerk, but Gates is Satan. I think the winner is clear.
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  Ah yes, humour. I forgot we can't have any of that here.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    [sarcasm]You don't get it dude, we're serious here. We're going to be multi-millionaires shortly and we can't waste our precious time on your silly jokes. Get with the program man.[/sarcasm] -4 ? really ? Wow, you must have a fanclub of sorts. I think HN's stance on 'humorous' content has it's merits but I highly doubt if pg would have written such a thing that he would be modded into the ground like that. On the other hand you really don't want HN to become another ./.

loltrader 17y ago

Agreed. I've always thought he's a douche bag.

jacquesm 17y ago

Compared to Woz both Steve and Bill are jerks.

jimbokun 17y ago
Compared to Woz, most people are jerks.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  True, but we're comparing made it big software guys here, and there are not that many of those. Steve Wozniak is a genuinely nice person from just about every story that is told about him. Gates, Jobs and plenty of others from his generation that made it big had just the same opportunities to give as much as they took. And they let those opportunities slide, that's why I think the comparison is a meaningful one. To compare Steve Wozniak to the cornerstore grocer is not very productive. That's comparing apples (pun intended, twice) with organges.
- satyajit 17y ago
  Weird stmt. Its like saying 'Compared to Ferrari, most cars are piece of junk'!

spitfire 17y ago

The difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs isn't actively trying to HURT others through illegal and unethical business practices. Gates' company has been found guilty of this a number of times. Steve just makes his products and if someone wants to play in his sandbox they play by his rules. He may be a dick to work with, but he isn't actively hurting others. And no, I wouldn't say making some donations - no matter the amount, makes up for past actions.

jacquesm 17y ago
That's very true. The lawsuit that got swept under the carpet should have gone through and it probably would have led to some serious sanctions against ms. There is no way that Gates would have been able to deny knowledge of all the stuff they were doing that was clearly illegal. Earlier today there was a thread about possible tainting of the bing serps by microsoft, one of their employees did his very best to make it clear that they have changed their attitude. I salute the man for his upright position on this, if everybody there would be like that it would be a different story altogether, but it is going to be a long long time before I'm going to give microsoft the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. The road behind is literally littered with the corpses of companies that came under the tank, and a good portion of those did not do anything to deserve the treatment they got.
stanleydrew 17y ago
This is kind of absurd in its lack of even-handedness. I'm no expert on the history of these two men and the histories of their companies, but to say that Gates and MS have actively tried to hurt others whereas Jobs and Apple haven't would appear to reveal a serious pro-Apple bias. First, lack of a conviction for anti-competitive behavior doesn't imply that Apple's not actively trying to hurt competitors or consumers. It just means they haven't done anything bad enough to warrant the government getting involved yet. But more than that, I'm not sure we should even care about convictions. I think every major company tries to create an environment in which they have the best chance of success. A lot of times they do things that are anti-competitive and harm consumers in order to create that environment. And a lot of times those things slip under the radar. I think this article does a great job of describing some of what Apple has been doing in that regard with iTunes and the App Store. And to pretend that Apple's recent actions haven't actively hurt other companies and even its own customers is ridiculous. Finally, the statement that "Steve just makes his products and if someone wants to play in his sandbox they play by his rules" could just as well be applied to Gates. But if I were to make such a statement most people Apple fans would flip out. So Steve "just makes" this personal music management software that everyone loves which is great, and then says oh wait, if you want to use it to sync with a portable music device you can only do it with our product. Way back Gates "just made" this operating system that everyone loved which was great, and then said oh wait, if you want to surf the web you'll have to do it with our product (that wasn't even the restriction, which is yet another absurdity of this comparison). Somehow otherwise intelligent people magically dismiss the former as Jobs just exerting his right to dictate the terms on which you can use his products, while considering the latter massively anti-competitive behavior. Someone please explain what's going on.

axod 17y ago

Steve Jobs seems to have a knack for correctly recognizing what most people will find beautiful, and making it happen :/ I don't really care if he's a jerk or not, and I don't really find the article convincing TBH. Bill Gates has done more to hold back progress of software than anyone else. Giving some money to charity doesn't really suddenly make things fine again.

jimbokun 17y ago
"Giving some money to charity doesn't really suddenly make things fine again." The kinds of things that Gates are working on now are arguably more important than the rate of progress in software. Like preventing easily preventable diseases in third world countries.
zaidf 17y ago
Bill Gates has done more to hold back progress of software than anyone else. At least he never created a Windows Store, like, you know, Steve Jobs. I say this as someone who greatly admires Jobs and watches his Stanford speech for inspiration often. But as far as not holding back progress, Steve Jobs isn't whole lot better than Microsoft.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Second that. If Jobs would have had the opportunity to create a lock in like microsoft had/has on the desktop market he would have done it in a heartbeat. The guy is an amazing business man and an inspiration to many but I doubt they're ever going to name some ethics prize after him.
corntoole 17y ago
I have to disagree with the statement that Gates has done so much to hold back software. Some of the best minds in computing still are @ Microsoft Research. MSFT pours billions into basic and applied computer science research. If you say that Gates is very much responsible for the stagnation of software development, than you could blame Jobs just as much if not more b/c Jobs was the one who led the charge in making computing a pop culture when he saw the Xerox PC, decided to build the Mac, but missed some of the really cool ideas behind it.

scythe 17y ago

Eric Schmidt and Scott McNealy are the trivial ones, I guess, though Sun never got into the consumer market. Perhaps Shuttleworth?

jaymon 17y ago

I had a professor that was instrumental in creating the IEEE floating point standard (or something like that, I don't quite remember) and was heavily recruited by Apple back in the day, so heavily in fact that Steve Jobs personally took him and his wife out to dinner. His wife disliked Steve so bad that after the dinner she refused to let him even consider the job with Apple. Just a little anecdote about Steve Jobs that I always found funny and remembered.

cakesy 17y ago
That could be a huge compliment to the guy, depending on his wife. At least with some of the wives I have known.
staunch 17y ago
I've met people I thought were assholes at first. People I've become friends with have told me they thought I was an asshole at first. First impressions are exactly that.
- mhartl 17y ago
  True, but with Steve Jobs it goes beyond that: from innumerable accounts by people who have known or met him, it's clear that Jobs is an asshole based not just on a first impression, but on an nth impression for all values of n.

shiranaihito 17y ago

He always seemed like a jerk compared to Bill Gates. Jobs may be a jerk, but Gates is Satan. I think the winner is clear.

shiranaihito 17y ago
Ah yes, humour. I forgot we can't have any of that here.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  [sarcasm]You don't get it dude, we're serious here. We're going to be multi-millionaires shortly and we can't waste our precious time on your silly jokes. Get with the program man.[/sarcasm] -4 ? really ? Wow, you must have a fanclub of sorts. I think HN's stance on 'humorous' content has it's merits but I highly doubt if pg would have written such a thing that he would be modded into the ground like that. On the other hand you really don't want HN to become another ./.