AAVR Magazine

Life without Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (and Woz)

Last Friday marked the end of Bill Gates’ job at his company Microsoft—so he can now focus all of his attention onto his new life’s work, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Now whether you love or hate Microsoft, love or hate Bill Gates, you have to respect him. You have to respect what he is now going to dedicate his life to doing, and you have to respect what he has done for the world. And this past weekend, I really got to thinking about how my life and the world would truly be different if it hadn’t been for three men. Yes, I say three men, Bill Gates who of course is the founder and genius behind Microsoft, and the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniack (Woz), who are the fathers of Apple Computer.

Now I am not going to go into any kind of detailed history about these companies as that would take far too much time, however, if you don’t want to read but are interested in a movie style history, rent “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” It’s a great little movie about the rise of Microsoft and Apple.

Before these men, computers were tinker toys for hobbyists and tools for some scientists. But they were not mass produced, they didn’t even have screens, but then some college slacker who had no luck with the ladies spent way too much time with a computer. This would of course be Bill Gates. Thanks to his superior nerdiness, he eventually created his company which promise to create DOS (Disk Operating System) for IBM computers (actually purchasing it from a programmer for a few k), and then convincing them to let them also sell it to IBM’s competitors. Meanwhile, Steve and Steve were in the garage creating their own computers, and then trying to sell them. It wasn’t long before the Steves and Bill eventually ran into each other, and a somewhat up and down relationship ensued between Gates and Jobs. And of course, the two companies blossomed into what we see today, but what would life be like had these great men became plumbers instead?

Aside from the facts that the Internet would be different, computers would be different, I have looked passed that to surmise how my life would be different on a personal level. In fact, I know that all of my friends that I have made since high school would not be my friends because I would never of met them, and as a result, I would never of met my wife. Sounds drastic? Well, not really and I’ll tell you how I came to this conclusion. I chose my college because they had a laptop program where each student is given a laptop. Had Gates, Jobs, and Woz not started their companies when they did, and pushed to bring computers into the consumer sector there is little chance that my college would have a laptop program, therefore I would have gone somewhere else. And since all of the friends that I have met since high school are a direct result of people I knew in college, then I would never of met any of them, including AAVR co-founder Justin.

Here is a fun exercise for everyone to try. Pretend that Microsoft and Apple never existed, and think about how your life would be different. Who would you have never met, what books would you have read because you needed something to do. Maybe you wouldn’t have the job you have now because Monster.com was never created or you didn’t buy or sell that piece of junk on eBay. Go ahead, give it a shot, and post your thoughts in the comments area.

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