"Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo."

--Bill Gates, Microsoft

Summary: Steve Jobs to help glorify himself as departure may be imminent

APPLE is failing to innovate in recent years. What have they got? The atrocious iPad [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]? It may soon join this new list of "top 10 worst Apple products of all time" as it is already harshly criticised for its risky DRM experiments:

Apple is dusting off FairPlay - the digital rights management used by iTunes - to protect electronic copies of books sold to iPad users.

Apple sells overpriced computers for no defensible reason. Recent surveys showed Mac hardware to be defective hardware, more so than non-Apple PCs, so Apple responds with extended warranties, not improved quality of components (Apple hardware, just like most hardware, is made in China and then badged with the Apple logo).

But anyway, what we found most curious are these many articles about a New York Times report.

Steve Jobs has put himself on a par with Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin in anointing the man he would like to write his official biography. Maybe.

That's not good. People writing (or assisting the writing of) their own biography, as opposed to autobiography? Dangerous territories there. Let's learn our lessons from Gates and his foundation, which is being used for monopolisation and self glorification more than anything else. Neither Apple nor Microsoft brought us the GUI for example, yet they claim credit for far too many things. Those two companies brought proprietary software to people's desktops, including all sorts of malicious features like DRM and remote kill switches. The last thing the world needs is to have these people rewrite history. As Richard Stallman stated in his BBC piece, "Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us." ⬆

"Remala was tired of working on languages and was ready for a new challenge. Gates gave him one: develop a graphics-based windowing shell just like VisiOn, only better.

"Remala and McCabe studied Xerox PARC's Star system, which Gates had purchased for Microsoft to reverse engineer. The $15,000 Star system had one of the most innovative interfaces available at the time. Icons of familiar objects like desktop folders, documents, and in-baskets decorated the screen."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul