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re: Who would you rank as more important in the history of computer development....
Posted on 8/17/20 at 2:53 am to RollTide1987
Posted on 8/17/20 at 2:53 am to RollTide1987
quote:Gates/Microsoft rode the wave more than drove it. The wave was coming regardless. Microsoft got big due to strong advertising and shrewd business practices.
Gates was all about the democratization of home computing...I don't think computers become as popular as they are today without PC and Microsoft.
1
Posted on 8/17/20 at 2:57 am to RollTide1987
Gordon Clark, Joe MacMillan, or Cameron Howe
Posted on 8/17/20 at 3:24 am to Korkstand
quote:
Microsoft got big due to strong advertising and shrewd business practices.
And government contracts. But that was part of the marketing and shrewd business practices.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 3:26 am to LSU316
quote:Apple invented the first PDA (Newton) in 1992, and a tablet (MessagePad) in 1993, when Jobs did NOT work there (he left Apple in '85 and returned in '97). IBM invented the first PDA with telephony (a smartphone) called Simon in 1994. Microsoft modified Windows for tablets in the early 2000s (and the tablet concept goes back decades further). And does anyone even remember Blackberry anymore? They owned the 2000s and really got people accustomed to mobile computing (email, apps, etc).
Now if the question were on the history of mobile computing it's easily Jobs.
Jobs had nothing to do with the first PDA, tablet, smartphone, touchscreen, or mobile OS. The iPhone came out in 2007 and Jobs died 4 years later. How is he the most important person in the history of mobile computing?
Posted on 8/17/20 at 4:45 am to RollTide1987
Gates is a thief
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:08 am to EA6B
quote:
Wozniak
I think Gates, Woz, Engelbart, Jobs.
In that order. Gates had a true vision for improving the capabilities of computers and was the biggest supporter of allowing people to still hack/open source while still giving enough structure to actually grow the field.
Wozniak was probably the best original thinker of the computer age. He sucked as a businessman.
Jobs did more for the aesthetics and feel of computers than anyone. Things as simple as him selecting a standard font besides the msdos is huge. Without that, we arguably wouldn’t even have font styles on computers until the age of apps.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:16 am to Korkstand
quote:
How is he the most important person in the history of mobile computing?
He made it readily available to every person basically and made it a commodity/item that you couldn't live without.....everything you mentioned helped allow him to do that but he is the man that ran the company that made it happen.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:23 am to EA6B
quote:
What we know as Windows was actually developed by Xerox.
The Xerox PARC project inspired it for sure but Microsoft incorporated CUA which made the GUI more desirable for end users and with 3.1 included networking which was a game changer.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:41 am to Korkstand
quote:
No man, you've got that backwards. Gates and Jobs stand on the shoulders of thousands of open source innovators.
To steal a line from Aaron Sorkin: Gates and Jobs "played the orchestra." Sure...they might have paid others to do the heavy lifting for them, but THEY were the men who actually made the deals and marketed the products that eventually put a computer in just about every home on the planet. If it wasn't for Jobs or for Gates, these open-source hobbyists would have likely just designed computers that could only be successfully operated by other hobbyists.
The guy who invented DOS wasn't doing jack shite with it. It was an operating system for computers that was being shared among other hobbyists. If Gates hadn't bought it from the programmer in question, we never would have heard of it because only Gates would have had the balls to tell IBM that he must be allowed to open source the program to other computer companies.
This post was edited on 8/17/20 at 6:42 am
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:46 am to RollTide1987
Al Gore
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:52 am to RollTide1987
Robert Yannes
Posted on 8/17/20 at 6:55 am to LSU316
quote:
He made it readily available to every person basically and made it a commodity/item that you couldn't live without.
the putative demand for cell phones had already been exposed so pre-iphone it was something "people couldn't live without"
the reason why Jobs's timing seems perfect was due to another non-OS tech company: Facebook. social media, not Apple, drove the next round of putative demand that re-shaped how we saw phones. it wasn't Apple or Windows. it was Facebook
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:04 am to SlowFlowPro
quote:
the putative demand for cell phones had already been exposed so pre-iphone it was something "people couldn't live without"
I don't think he's talking about cell phones. By the time the iPhone was introduced in 2007, just about every person in the civilized world had one. What he's talking about is the personal computer, which wouldn't have become nearly as popular as it did if not for the efforts of men like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The democratization of home computing doesn't happen without them.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:07 am to RollTide1987
quote:
What he's talking about is the personal computer,
kork's post was about mobile computing, IIRC
quote:
By the time the iPhone was introduced in 2007, just about every person in the civilized world had one.
agreed, and if the above is true, then you agree with me on the larger point, too.
This post was edited on 8/17/20 at 7:08 am
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:13 am to RollTide1987
The answer is Jobs, no question.
Microsoft has never really done anything innovative. The Apple II, on the other hand, was really the first example of what people think of today when they talk about a "computer." It was something useful and affordable for non-hobbyists and it quickly became ubiquitous in homes and schools.
Gates got to implement the OS for the original IBM PC, which was a complete piece of crap that sold well because it came from IBM and had a nice keyboard that secretaries didn't complain about.
Microsoft has never really done anything innovative. The Apple II, on the other hand, was really the first example of what people think of today when they talk about a "computer." It was something useful and affordable for non-hobbyists and it quickly became ubiquitous in homes and schools.
Gates got to implement the OS for the original IBM PC, which was a complete piece of crap that sold well because it came from IBM and had a nice keyboard that secretaries didn't complain about.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:17 am to SlowFlowPro
Yes, if the above is true I agree with you on the larger point. I just saw the word "computing" in his OP and assumed he was talking about laptops and desktops.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:38 am to SlowFlowPro
What was the first cell phone that people stood in line to get...it was the iPhone 3g.....that was also the first phone that that vast majority of people ever accessed the internet on.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:40 am to RollTide1987
Gates ultimately made personal computing affordable for the masses. Not something Jobs ever cared about, not that it mattered. He achieved what he wanted.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:42 am to RollTide1987
gates is just like zuckerburg, someone else created what they stole and marketed into untold wealth because they are low life parasite scum, but they were smart enough to scam honest people out of what they created so.... got to give them that.
Posted on 8/17/20 at 7:43 am to RollTide1987
It isn’t remotely surprising that when asked to compare two names on the OT, half of the first page is bringing up different names. 
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