Bill or Steve?

IT was a rare moment: Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, the two icons of the personal computing age, together on stage — something that hasn’t happened in a long time.

Of course it was all over the news, and it’s interesting to read that the two longtime rivals acted more like friends as they traded quips and reminisced about the good old days of computing.

Bill and Steve almost seem tailor-made as rivals in an epic tale for the digital age. The two of them are so different that they’re almost caricatures — like comic book characters destined to oppose each other. Bill and Microsoft are almost universally bashed, while Steve and Apple are, well, the apple of a lot of people’s eyes. Bill’s a geek. Steve’s cool. Bill is coldly logical. Steve’s the mystical dude with the “reality distortion field.”

If you’ve never seen the made for TV docudrama “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” then check it out for a fascinating look into the personalities of these two men and those early years of computing. The movie was based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, and stars Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates.

For me, the funny thing about all this is how Bill has been vilified over the decades and almost seen as, you know, the Antichrist himself, whereas Steve has enjoyed the adulation of people. Let’s face it: they weren’t kidding about the Cult of the Mac. Mac lovers are so fiercely loyal to the brand in ways that border on fanaticism, and Apple has also benefited from the fact that it gets a lot of love from media — even otherwise hard-nosed journalists who just happen to really, really like Apple. To the point that Apple almost always gets a free pass, playing the role of either hero or victim, with Steve as genius or, heck, messiah. Of course, Bill is perfectly cast as the villain, with Microsoft as the Evil Empire. To criticize Apple is almost an act of blasphemy.

Now, I happen to admire Steve Jobs, even if I don’t see him as the second coming of Christ, but I have to admit I’ve never fallen for the mystique of the Mac. If you think about it, Apple failed in its original mission of overthrowing IBM and its PC and making the personal computer affordable for every home. Sure, the faithful will point out that the measure of the Mac’s success is the quality of the product instead of something as crass as actual sales figures, but mass market success was the original goal. If I’m not mistaken, the snobbery only came in after Apple failed to achieve mainstream success, to wit: Hey, everyone else has a PC, but I’m special because I have a Mac.

But really, who has made the greater impact? We may rail against the so-called Wintel duopoly, but without a standard operating system and standard hardware, would the personal computing revolution have become as successful? Would the proprietary software and hardware of Apple have proven to be a better, cheaper alternative?

Personally, I’m more impressed by Apple’s success with the iPod and iTunes. In fact, one of the reasons Apple dropped the “Computer” part and changed its corporate name to simply Apple Inc. is that it recognized that it has become more than just a computer company. The company’s future is in the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and other consumer devices, not in personal computers. Sure, it will continue to make Macs because, let’s face it, no matter what happens, somebody will always buy one, but it will no longer be the core business of Apple.

Anyway, that’s just my take. How about you, who do you believe has made the bigger impact?

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