MaximumPC 2007 04

HOBBIES

While he was running

NeXT, Steve Jobs

made the little purchase

of Pixar, which he

tinkered with until he

finally sold it to Disney

for about a thousand

times what he paid for

it. Not bad for what

many Pixar staffers

termed a “hobby” job

for Jobs. He also prac-

tically invented comput-

ing as a hobby with the

launch of the original

Apple computer. A

huge music enthusiast,

Jobs is a rabid Barbra

Streisand fan and

reportedly once dated

Joan Baez. He is also

quoted as saying that

taking LSD was “one of

the two or three most

important things he has

done in his life.”

On the other hand,

Gates is a newly minted

card-carrying VIP at

Hooters and gets to eat

there for free.

WINNER: GATES

And the Winner Is...

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

On a serious note, Bill Gates—with his wife Melinda—

is the world’s largest philanthropist. The Bill & Melinda Gates

Foundation now has an endowment of $31.9 billion, most of the

money originating from Gates’s Microsoft fortune, with funds going to

education and health concerns around the world. Yet for all of Jobs’s

billions, he does not appear to have done much with his cash other

than hoard it under his mattress and invest in sneakers. And though

Microsoft’s enormous blister-packed software boxes don’t make

the company an environmental hero, Apple’s record is even worse.

It wasn’t until 2006 that the company rolled out a free recycling pro-

gram for its old hardware, and PC vendors’ programs remain supe-

rior to Apple’s across the board. Cheapskate!

WINNER: GATES

NOTABLE FAILURES

Gates has been behind

the wheel of a number

of huge missteps, with

Windows Millennium

Edition and Microsoft Bob

being his company’s most

visible abject failures.

With lackluster reviews for

Windows Vista pouring

in, things don’t look much

better for Gates, who’s

also faced serious criti-

cism for Windows’ draco-

nian DRM, the Zune, the

continued employment

of sweaty dance machine

Steve Ballmer, and, per-

haps worst of all, pioneer-

ing product activation.

Jobs’s failures are minimal

in comparison, dating

back to the Lisa and

Apple III era for outright

disasters. Apple’s more

recent missteps—the

Newton and G4 Cube—

are barely even failures at

all, having impressively

spawned modder groups

and fan clubs.

WINNER: JOBS

STEVE JOBS

CEO, Apple

head 2 head TWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES

It’s a close race, but Bill Gates’s penchant for giving away all his

money really pushes him over the top. While Gates may be oft-

maligned as an evil warlord running one of the world’s most unsavory

companies, he’s a true technologist who, until recently, was known

for spending long hours in the trenches. Jobs, however, seems more

obsessed with his own celebrity and his onstage showmanship than in

the goings-on at Apple, though his frequent, well-rehearsed song-and-

dance numbers never fail to leave even us impressed.

Still, we wouldn’t complain if Microsoft delivered products that

worked well, arrived on time, and looked good. Nor would we raise a

ruckus if Apple enacted an across-the-board 20 percent price cut on its

entire line of products. But that’s probably just spewing crazy talk.

round 3

round^4

round^5

APRIL 2007 MAXIMUMPC 17

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN ABEL