Biographer Says Bill Gates Was Smarter Than Steve Jobs

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The actual headline to this story is "Steve Jobs biographer: Bill Gates was smarter than Steve Jobs by almost any conventional measure" but that wouldn't fit.

The most memorable quote we’d point out was Isaacson’s reaction to the connection between Jobs and Microsoft’s CEO Bill Gates: "Bill Gates was smarter than Steve Jobs by almost any conventional measure."
 
I can see that. But imagination goes a long way and it seemed Steve was way more creative.
 
Steve Jobs was far better at marketing for sure. Plus he really knew how to mix the kool-aid just right.
 
Steve Jobs was far better at marketing for sure. Plus he really knew how to mix the kool-aid just right.

Bill Gates was a brilliant businessman at marketing his software to companies, though. Part of his genius was also maintaining ownership of his software even if he sold copies of it to another company, so he could sell it to whomever he wanted.
 
Steve was a marketing guy. He was always claiming other peoples ideas as his own, taking credit for others work, and being a dick. Bill Gates was a nerd. He liked being a nerd. He was a business man, too. But, he was a nerdy businessman. He didn't want the artsy looking stuff - he wanted functionality over looks.

Steve Jobs was a dick, but a genius in marketing. No doubt about that. Bill Gates was hella smart, still is, and isn't much of a dick. Even as a past Gates basher (never liked the guy - no real reason why....) I would love to meet him now. My opinions have changed a lot since he left Microsoft.
 
I think people fail to realize Bill Gates has nothing to do with MS since about 2006 and even then not like he used to before 2000. When Bill was in the game, Apple wasn't worth anywhere near as much as it is now.
 
Both men are/were geniuses in their field. It's not really a level playing field, though. If Bill were to lock down the architecture and rights like Steve did to Apple, then it'd be an apples to apples comparison. My hat goes off to both men.

It's kinda like the Spielberg v Lucas arguments.
 
Bill Gates definitely was smarter and did more, Jobs was just better than anyone at marketing though.
 
Steve Jobs was far better at marketing for sure. Plus he really knew how to mix the kool-aid just right.

Bill Gates was better at business. For a long time he was the #1 most wealthy person in the world. Windows owned and still owns majority of PC platforms, while Macintosh sits at a lowly less then 10%. Before Apple switched to Intel it was 2%.

The success of Apple was directly from the iPod, which lead to the iPhone and the iPad. In this market Apple is extremely successful but at that point Bill Gates isn't really involved with Microsoft anymore. Nowadays he's busy being a family man and donates money.

Steve Jobs is miserably dead and wasn't a family man. He wasn't as wealthy as Steve Jobs either. He even left behind a message how he wanted to destroy Android for doing something that even Apple did and bragged about it.
 
Really? It's to this now?

Predicting the next book/story's comparing their sexual prowess and penis length.:rolleyes:

I swear Gates vs Jobs is going to last longer than Ford vs Chevy.
 
I think people fail to realize Bill Gates has nothing to do with MS since about 2006 and even then not like he used to before 2000. When Bill was in the game, Apple wasn't worth anywhere near as much as it is now.

I came here to say this. People are trying to compare Steve Jobs to current Microsoft not Bill Gates.

This is more like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were playing daily tennis matches for years, and poor Steve couldn't so much as win a game. Eventually Bill Gates stopped showing up to the court. Without an Bill as an opponent Steve starting scoring points winning some games and sets. If people want to pretend the two are comparable, then do so when both were playing the game.

All of his marketing "genius" didn't mean dick until the path was clear.
 
No - bullshit. Bill Gates didn't have a fan base that released a bullshit biography.

Furthermore, Steve Jobs didn't donate to charities and research studies. I mean, who would be a moron and give their money away to thinks like... little kids being smarter... and finding cures for canc--- oh shit.
 
Shocking I got a house plant that is smarter than steve jobs.


At last an explanation why all the fucking apple hipsters a dumb enough to buy apple crap they are to stupid to understand anything bill gates makes or any linux based product or why they are being charged 12 times as much for slow as hardware in cheep shiny white plastic.



Image+%3D+steve_jobs_evil.jpg
 
No duh story of the day.

When the iPhone fad fades away or is surpassed by something else, the majority of the worlds computer will still be running an MS product
 
Shocking I got a house plant that is smarter than steve jobs.


At last an explanation why all the fucking apple hipsters a dumb enough to buy apple crap they are to stupid to understand anything bill gates makes or any linux based product or why they are being charged 12 times as much for slow as hardware in cheep shiny white plastic.



Image+%3D+steve_jobs_evil.jpg

Linux is a pain in the ass and as limited to the end user as Chrome OS. MS was vilified just as Apple is these days preceding their resuscitation from life-support. Bill Gates conventional approach made Apple popular as an alternative platform long before the iMac or iPod.
 
It'll be interesting to see how Apple does now that their master pitchman is gone. He did manage to finally make a religion out of it though, so it may thrive for a quite a while on that alone.
 
(..and yes I have been a part of the anti-Apple crowd for most of that time -- but Jobs did what Gates could not -- provide an enormous public with computer devices that were digestible for them.)
 
Bill Gates definitely was smarter and did more, Jobs was just better than anyone at marketing though.

negative sir.
jobs was exceptional when it came to marketing and knew exactly how to make people want what they were given... but he was far from being 'better than anyone'.... just better than anyone else in the tech industry.

of course thats just my opinion.. but for a small nominal fee it can be yours as well :p
 
the main difference was that Bill Gates was a nerd, he understood nerds, and more importantly, appealed to nerds.
Steve jobs was not a nerd, he understood the regular person, and more importantly, made his products easy to understand for the normal person.
you tell me which one is the more succesful startegy
While the iphone was shunned by most IT managers across the world for lack of security etc, when enough employees started buying them, they had to start supporting them.
So apple started increasing their market share in the corporate world through the consumer world.

I am not supporting either one, and i am not claiming either one is or is not a genius
I am just saying they worked in different ways, not fair to compare them
because both have changed the way we do things

and to the poster that said wait till the iphone fad fades out
before the iphone fad we had the ipod fad
and now we have the ipad fad
and the macbook air outsells all the other light notebooks
and the imac outsells all other desktops
so they are not a 1 trick pony :)
 
Personally, I find most measures of intelligence absurd because there are advantages and disadvantages to different type of intelligence. Many times, more complex intellects have a problem with recognizing, regarding, and accepting obvious simplicity of situations. I think it is important to look at the actual manifestations of differing types of minds rather than it is judge according to arbitrary standards like an intelligence quotient. I.E., it is important to look at 'intelligence in action.'

Einstein, for example, had an unconventional intelligence that would not have measured as high as many other intellects on particular tests. Peyton Manning would test quite low, in contrast to many minds, but is able to manifest a huge quantity of 'intellgence in action.'
 
Some of you guys touting Bill Gates as a marketing genius have very short memory. Microsoft has a colorful history of blackmailing and strong-arming OEM and B&M stores in the same fashion as Intel.

History repeats itself with Windows 8 and its UEFI requirements with OEM disguised as boot level malware and rootkit protection. Of course Microsoft says OEM is more than welcome not to include UEFI in their systems. Sounds familiar, no?

On a level playing field, who's to say who was the better marketing genius? Bill Gates is ruthless and he will destroy everything in his path by any means. Steve Jobs was a totalitarianist. He will do anything to clamp down his computer empire with an iron fist.

We'll never know now, will we?
 
he was the books points out several times the gates has the smarter guy, but jobs was more creative.

one thing in the book i found quite funny was the bit where the author mentions when Gates visited Jobs house. Gates has a uber h00ge mansion thats spiffy and uber with its own security detial etc. he looked arounds at jobs house which was smaller and very normal and asked steve jobs wife if they all actually lived there. i was always under the impression he lived in some hitech but artsy house
 
the main difference was that Bill Gates was a nerd, he understood nerds, and more importantly, appealed to nerds.
Steve jobs was not a nerd, he understood the regular person, and more importantly, made his products easy to understand for the normal person.
you tell me which one is the more succesful startegy
While the iphone was shunned by most IT managers across the world for lack of security etc, when enough employees started buying them, they had to start supporting them.
So apple started increasing their market share in the corporate world through the consumer world.

I am not supporting either one, and i am not claiming either one is or is not a genius
I am just saying they worked in different ways, not fair to compare them
because both have changed the way we do things

and to the poster that said wait till the iphone fad fades out
before the iphone fad we had the ipod fad
and now we have the ipad fad
and the macbook air outsells all the other light notebooks
and the imac outsells all other desktops
so they are not a 1 trick pony :)

iMac outsells all other desktops? Might wanna get some facts broceritops. If you want to compare the two, the corporate world alone speaks volumes on which one is superior.


Not that I'm insulting Mac - but I can safely say one has beat the other. Mac will have it's niche - but like all fads, they will fade over time.
 
(..and yes I have been a part of the anti-Apple crowd for most of that time -- but Jobs did what Gates could not -- provide an enormous public with computer devices that were digestible for them.)

Seems that Windows has been pretty "digestible" for a vast majority of people...
 
Seems that Windows has been pretty "digestible" for a vast majority of people...

Windows took over the PC OS market, long before there was a mass to digest it. The inevitable construction of the Internet, while MS was the dominant OS, sealed Microsoft's fate as the[t] OS. MS was unsuccessful in its bids into both the tablet and media player markets, even though it had greater resources and little competition.
 

The biggest market for apps is iOS and all the offical iOS app tools only run on MacOS so a bunch of app developers attending a Google conference about Chrome and Android would probably be running a Mac - because they don't have much of a choice.

Most apps are dumb. And most people who buy most of those apps are also dumb. But the people who make the dumb apps that the dumb people buy - those people are geniuses (and sell outs).
 
(I suppose that I should've worded myself a bit more succinctly than saying the "construction" of the Internet. What I meant was that a world-wide network was destined to be a part of personal computing, and Microsoft's destiny was sealed with its explosion of the Internet onto the commercial and public scene.)
 
I wish I could edit. I suppose I'll have to check my posts more closely before I put them up. I meant MS's destiny was sealed with the explosion of Internet. If they had be usurped previous to the Internet explosion, supplanting them may have proved easier for competitors. They made a lot of money off of fate, itself.
 
I wish I could edit. I suppose I'll have to check my posts more closely before I put them up. I meant MS's destiny was sealed with the explosion of Internet. If they had be usurped previous to the Internet explosion, supplanting them may have proved easier for competitors. They made a lot of money off of fate, itself.

I don't think you can really deny, though, that up until the iPod, Apple was pretty much a fringe company on the verge of shutting down. The only Macs I ever really saw pre-iPod were old Apple ]['s in elementary schools.
 
I don't think you can really deny, though, that up until the iPod, Apple was pretty much a fringe company on the verge of shutting down. The only Macs I ever really saw pre-iPod were old Apple ]['s in elementary schools.

Yeah, I stated that earlier. Apple was a "fringe" company, but they were favored by a lot of educators and had made contracts in the 80's and 90's with a lot of schools - which probably kept them afloat until they could bloat into today's company.

Atari and Commodore were considered more "on the fringe" than Apple, before their demise in the PC industry. In part, this was because they were not popularly accepted by schools like Apple or by businesses like IBM compats. Of course, universities had a lot of IBM compats. and UNIX systems, as well as some Apples.
 
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