Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates literally created the 21st century, just as Henry Ford did the 20th century and James Watt the 19 century.
James Watt did not invent the steam engine. But, his innovations, along with those of Richard Trevithick and others; and his marketing savvy, transformed the steam engine from a lumbering pumping engine found only in mines to a compact source of power that reached every corner of 19th century life and every corner of the world. The firm of
Boulton and Watt was the Microsoft of the 19th century; most of the money they made from the early engines was not the payment for the engine itself, but the royalties that were paid on the amount of fuel savings obtained from the new engines; a precursor to today's software license.</SPAN>
Henry Ford likewise did not create the automobile. But, his assembly line techniques along with his development of the Ford empire transformed the automobile from a plaything for the rich to a necessary part of life that anyone could afford. Eli Whitney and others had invented interchangeable parts; but it was Ford’s assembly and efficiency studies that gave us the consumer society of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century.</SPAN>
Neither Jobs nor Gates invented the personal computer; but both had the vision to see one in every home, school, and business in the country, and not just in offices. IBM invented the IBM PC; but did not see as anymore more than second fiddle to it’s mainframe business. Bill Gates saw it as much more than that, and sold MS-DOS to the makers of IBM “clones”; they brought us the affordable computers we have today.
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When I worked in a computer store in the late 1980s; we had to have shelves for the Commodore 64 and Amiga, Apple IIe and Macintosh, and IBM PC software. Peripherals like printers were a nightmare to work with; trying to find the right drivers to work with your software and operating system. Microsoft Windows was/is in some ways inferior to the Macintosh OS; but once again, Gate’s clever marketing gave us the more-or-less uniform computer world we have today; while the game console market is now fragmented, you can buy a game or software for your home computer and feel relatively certain it will work.</SPAN>
But Gates fumbled when it came to the Internet and handheld devices during the late 1990s. Jobs did not; and gave us the iMac, then the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The rest, as they say, is history.</SPAN>
The futurist movies of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century saw 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century life composed of living in massive glass cities, traveling in flying cars and SSTs, and taking vacations on the moon. It turns out that life today is not a lot different from the 1990s – the cities have changed little in the past 50 years, we are still flying many of the same Boeing aircraft that came out the late 1960s, and while our cars are more rounded; they have not changed much. What has transformed and set the stage for 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century life is the computer, and Jobs and Gates were two of the main driving forces to make computers the everyday objects they are today.</SPAN>
-James