I must disagree. While Jobs' contributions are not quite on the same level as what Edison, Einstein, Hopper, Ritchie or Turing did, Bill Gates did nothing at of that magnitude.
Had Microsoft never existed, 8-bit home computers would have used another version of BASIC. There were a couple floating around (you can play with them with an Atari or BBC emulator). Had Microsoft never existed, IBM would have adopted CP/M as its OS and PC clones would have been built around it (and would be more diverse because CP/M was much more portable than MS-DOS), but I doubt they'd be as common as they are today. We would probably have a much more diverse hardware environment (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputer), which could have created a cross-platform standard for software, most likely based on POSIX and X. Apple would still have launched the Lisa, and the Mac and they'd be successful. The web would be born anyway and so would be free and open source software (but there would probably be much less incentive to use it).
It's a horrible thing to say, but had Bill Gates decided to be a banker or a lawyer, the world would be a much better place. He would still be rich (because he was born that way).
Paul Allen would still have made his name in tech, possibly with MITS. Ballmer would have graduated from Stanford.
Actually, he's funding the work, not curing Malaria himself. And he's doing that in order to redeem his legacy, something that wouldn't be necessary (redeeming his legacy, not curing Malaria) had he not made Microsoft in the first place.
And, BTW, he didn't invent this idea of amassing vast resources with shady deals and then becoming a philanthropist and redeem himself with this. Andrew Carnegie did it first.
Had Microsoft never existed, 8-bit home computers would have used another version of BASIC. There were a couple floating around (you can play with them with an Atari or BBC emulator). Had Microsoft never existed, IBM would have adopted CP/M as its OS and PC clones would have been built around it (and would be more diverse because CP/M was much more portable than MS-DOS), but I doubt they'd be as common as they are today. We would probably have a much more diverse hardware environment (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputer), which could have created a cross-platform standard for software, most likely based on POSIX and X. Apple would still have launched the Lisa, and the Mac and they'd be successful. The web would be born anyway and so would be free and open source software (but there would probably be much less incentive to use it).
It's a horrible thing to say, but had Bill Gates decided to be a banker or a lawyer, the world would be a much better place. He would still be rich (because he was born that way).
Paul Allen would still have made his name in tech, possibly with MITS. Ballmer would have graduated from Stanford.