Leander Kahney seems to think there's something unethical about building products, managing an organization, and benefiting from it. The resentful epithets he throws around (cutthroat capitalist, vengeful nerd, selfish business goals, greedy capitalist, obscene fortune) are shallow tropes and stereotypes. No one has any duty to participate in the ridiculous rock-star, celebutard culture Kahney endorses. The greatest responsibility that "…comes with great wealth and power…" is restraint. Whether Jobs shows that restraint through anonymous giving or recalcitrant hoarding doesn't matter to me, his work speaks for itself. I'm sure he can endure the shame of not meeting Kahney's childishly conventional ideals.
Why is the focus on money here? The impact of the technologies they create dwarfs any monetary contributions. What's the value of their technology on top of what the obvious sellable product is? That is, how much more valuable is their product to the user on top of what the obvious product would have been?<p>It affects some products more than others. Productivity tools have high leverage, as do protocols and standards, because they are means to ends. End-user products like food, music, sex (for fun, not reproduction), and housing tend to have little leverage because they are closer to the ends. That is, more of them increases wealth.<p>iPods are good because they let lots of people enjoy more music than before. However, it is probably on slightly better than the obvious product and in any case, the possible impact of a media player is limited.<p>UNIX (or HTTP or C) on the other hand is non-obvious and a fundamental tool impacting work higher up the value chain. These things have enormous impact on wealth because of the knock-on effects of the tools and they afford. Innovation and development is approximately exponential and, rarely mentioned, prone to get stuck in local maxima. Here be dragons. Would we have as powerful an Internet if it weren't for a few key UNIX design decisions? What would a Microsoft designed world-wide computer network look like?<p>Try this: how much time do you think people spend trying to align things in PowerPoint that could be made a snap with better tools (maybe 2007 fixes this)? Let's say 2 min per presentation. With an estimated (by Microsoft) 30 million presentations a day, of which say a tenth are newly created, that means 6 million minutes, or about 11.5 man years, are wasted. Every day. Because PowerPoint doesn't make alignment easy. Not to mention that it may limit people's ideas. What if other Microsoft products have shortcomings more severe than those in PowerPoint?<p>Microsoft products often strike me as <i>worse</i> than the obvious product, prospering because of lock-in/short-sightedness.<p>By giving his money away, I doubt Gates could ever make up for the value creation Microsoft has blocked. He would have to find something with enormous leverage that would otherwise not happen -- don't get your hopes up. Thus, though I hope he proves us wrong, Gates is down in my book as one of the bad guys. Things are looking better now, but we've lost years of exponential innovation. I bet Kurzweil is annoyed.
The view of this writer brings up something that sickens me about philanthropy and that's doing it just to get the recognition and attention of rather than giving because you actually want to help someone.
I don't know if Jobs is well known outside of the computer industry, while OTOH everybody knows Bill Gates. If BG plays his cards right, he'll likely be not only widely-known and remembered, but he'll be remembered in a very positive light as well.
One is an artist with lots of personal issues that sometimes show through his way of doing business (I won't forgive Apple for breaking my TV cable ;-) - <a href="http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/i-really-want-to-like-apple" rel="nofollow">http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/i-really-want-to-lik...</a>), the other is a spoiled kid (<a href="http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/" rel="nofollow">http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/</a>) with a sense of entitlement (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists</a>) and a borderline psychopath white-collar criminal that thinks law does not apply to him (if you disagree, please watch his DoJ deposition at <a href="http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=56015" rel="nofollow">http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=56015</a>) with delusions that trying hard to become a philanthropist will make people forget his past.<p>Do we really need to compare them?
Being a "star" has almost nothing to do with being a good person. It's persona. Jobs has a very compelling life story. He approaches his work with the relentless perfectionism and devotion of an artist. He understands the value of theatrics and suspense. He's reclusive and arrogant but also charming. He's simply a more interesting character than Bill Gates who was a rich kid that went to Harvard and got even richer. I admire what he's doing with his money now but it doesn't change the fact that he's a boring character.
Personally I don't base my opinions of someone on their public support of the things I support. I like Jobs because I like his products, I couldn't care less about Gates because I find his products sloppy and awkward to use. Why do we have to get into a bunch of 'well Gates gave more money to the poor!' discussions? Not even getting into the issue of Jobs being a very private guy in general -- why is this any of our business?