When Jobs And Gates Go, What Will The Tech World Look Like?

Fortune is having a nice old time peering into the crystal ball lately. First there was the lengthy gaze into Bill Gates' future after retiring from his regular spot at Microsoft. Then there were discussions of the post-Gates present and future of Microsoft in the hands of CEO Steve Ballmer, which suggested the timing of Gates' exit may be cleverly timed:

This spring Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), led by Ballmer, failed to consummate a big deal with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), which it now seems to have pushed into the arms of archrival Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). Last year's rollout of the latest version of Windows, called Vista, was a public relations and consumer marketing disaster. The rest of the software industry, meanwhile, is either supporting its products with advertising, like Google, or starting to rent them as online services. Microsoft has yet to gain traction in either business.

... To a lot of consumers out there, Microsoft really does seem like that bumbling nebbish played by Daily Show contributor John Hodgman.

But Steve Ballmer v. Steve Jobs just doesn't sound right -- not much of a fair fight, really -- and in a bit of cynicism inspired partially by all the buzz lately about Jobs' health and appearance, Fortune looks forward and projects who it thinks might be the next CEO of Apple if Jobs were, for any reason, to leave the company, following fellow tech titan Gates into retirement.

Fortune lists 11 possibilities to take over for Jobs should he step down in the near future, including Tony Fadell, senior vice president of the iPod division.

With his American swagger and his hair bleached white, Fadell stood out at button-down Philips Electronics, where he led an in-house pirate operation designing Windows CE-based devices. It was there that he came up with the idea of marrying a Napster-like music store with a hard drive-based MP3 player. He shopped the concept around the Valley before Apple's Jon Rubenstein snapped it up and put Fadell in charge of the engineering team that built the first iPod. Now he runs the hardware division that makes two of Apple's three key product lines: the iPod and the iPhone. Ambitious and charismatic (and no longer a bleached blond), "Fadell is the man if SJ gets to pick (his successor)," says 9to5Mac's Cleve Nettles.

Comments

[Coyote2]

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[Markvli]

We've been building computers and operating systems and music devices for decades now. Hopefully what comes next is more meaningful innovation.

[Coyote2]

And that is why it is important to realize that Gates' vision is obsolete. What is this c-rap about windows anyway: one window on top of another? It is 20 years old in an industry where three years old is obsolete.

[arvay]

Gates' contribution to tech was over more than a decade ago. Windows and Office. For some time now, he's been a corporate CEO trying to squash opponents and unsuccessfully trying to adapt his old business model to the Internet.

His large talents and intelligence will do far more good applied to philanthropy.

[Sundialsvc4]

The computer industry does not actually center around these two personalities (flamboyant and "very good at being CEO" though they may be, in their respective ways). But it does make a good headline.

And... it points out a real sea-change that HAS taken place in the world of hardware and software development. Steve Jobs and his team is a poster-boy for it; Gates is a poster-boy for the Old Ways.

The Microsoft strategy is basically: "own everything." Then, lock it up in a vault and sell copies that no one can look at, inspect or change. They buy companies for cash, and assimilate their products into their grand Collective.

Apple, on the other hand, embraces open-source products ... Darwin, Apache, SQLLite, the list goes on. Then on top of that, they carefully place a few closed-source strategic pieces, and they control the hardware on which it is deployed. So they control both halves -- hardware, software. But they control only as little real-estate as they must.

And it works. Want to switch mid-stream from PowerPC to Intel? Done. Want to deploy a smart phone that runs OS/X? Done. Want to do a [[NOT_YET_­ANNOUNCED]­]? Done!

This is a fundamenta­lly-better engineering practice... smart, resourceful, and very profitable.

[Fotios]

I think you paint a little too rosey picture of Apple. They may embrace a bunch of open source projects, but they are far from an open source company. Do you remember when Jobs talked about how the recording industry should remove DRM mandates for their online music? He is the one who agrees to those mandates when he sells their music on iTunes.

Want to do a... not done!

Want an Apple product based on an open source OS... not done.

Now to be fair, I do think Apple is better than Microsoft in terms of business ethics and consumer friendlyness, but they are only flawless to people like you who get boners for their sleek designs.

[Sundialsvc4]

Fotios, I never said that Apple was "an open-source company." Rather, what I did say was that the core foundations of their products are open-source, and that Apple derives a great deal of its competitive advantage from this.

Darwin is open-source. Apache, SQLLite, DNS, DHCP, blah-de-blah... a very large number of things that make up that system (let's not bore our audience with too many acronyms, eh?) ... are all "open source." So, immediately and without effort, Apple's shipping product that's going to be extremely inter-operable ... because it's quite likely to be running the very same software as does the machine they're inter-operating with.

Apple's product is proprietary; deployment is tightly controlled and I happen to like it that way because "it just works." (And I've got, in my 'shack'... Windows, Linux, OS/X. I'm nobody's fanboy.) But Apple did not have to build "the world," and they don't have to maintain it and they don't have to build an electric-fence around it.

They make "amazing" decisions, like switching from PowerPC to Intel, and they "just do it?" How? Because the foundational work ... had already been done.

"Dictum Ne Agas: Do Not Do A Thing Already Done." Instead, leverage it.

[TRichards]

The "progress" will continue on the same path regarding PCs -- from the exciting and creative environment which brought us all the early innovation to the numbing dullness of corporate-serving applications that are forever moving us further and further away from being able to solve our own tech problems. Buy, the kids, music lovers, and scrap bookers will be pleased -- consumers paying fees month after month for features made indispensable if only for the lack of alternatives. Just as the cell phone has killed off the pay phone (thereby making owning a cell phone almost a necessity), we'll find that we can't get things to operate without putting more coins into the slots.

The materialistic consumerism that has come to define America will only get worse -- and be passively accepted. Damn, I'm already missing George Carlin and similar voices that would at least try to wake us up.

[Wiredwilly]

I believe Nanotechnology will be the next big thing on Wall Street.

[dadw5boys]

Robot Prison Guards for all the American placed in RE EDUCATION PROGAMS under the new McCain Adminstration.

[Chavez08]

Open Source is the future, not outdated monopolies.

[WIpatriot]

Firefox rocks!

[michelv]

The title should be "consumer tech." Gates and JObs have nothing to do with the basic advances in the tech industry.

[KillTheMessenger]

I beg to differ, a little bit. One could argue that we might have been stuck with a black and green 25x80 text terminal if there had been no Apple and M$ wouldn't have had to "innovate" to stay alive.

What is true is that none of the great advances in user interface design and operating systems were invented by either company. They always just took what was known to academics for a decade and put it into product space.

[SeriousBlack]

"When Jobs And Gates Go, What Will The Tech World Look Like?"

Oh for pete's sake, they're just two individuals. I have a bit more respect for Jobs' unique abilities, but as far as Bill Gates goes, he's not the richest man in the world because of his innate talents and abilities. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and merely did 2 things: mercilessly steal other people's/company's ideas and hire truly brilliant people to work for him. (And anyone who's ever worked with him or around him seems to have the same opinion, that he's an arrogant a--h---.) Granted he is doing some good philanthropic work with his riches now, and I DO appreciate that. But this worship of him as some kind of "tech giant" without whom the tech world will be bereft... I don't think so. Microsoft will continue on, and will probably do even better without an egomaniac meanie at the helm. (And no, I am not one of those that seems to make a blanket practice of being envious and cutting down "rich and famous" people; if they do deserve kudos for their accomplishments and the kind of character that they have, then I'm the first to compliment someone.)
.

[KillTheMessenger]

I believe Bill gates is not even the richest man in the world any more. Not that it matters.

M$ is an amazing success story. It's capitalism at its best and worst. I hate them but one can not but look at them as a historic achievement.

As for Apple... it is the triumph of the real nerd, the guy who more often than not put his own tastes before the needs of his business. The world might have been better off if Apple had been more like M$ and M$ had been more like Apple, but in the end they are not that different. Both companies force their products on people rather than ask what we need. Apple just happens to have a tad more taste than M$. That's all.

[WIpatriot]

Good points, KTM.

[SeriousBlack]

...

There is an interesting documentary running on cable this week about the Apollo space program. Quite revealing is an interview segment with Michael Collins, in which he is addressing the importance­/celebrity of being one of the Apollo 11 astronauts. He is quite humble in making the observation that all three of them - Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins - were born in 1930, and just happened to be picked to go to the moon. And it could have been any one of dozens of astronauts - he just happened to be "in the right place at the right time". Sometimes people do make their own history almost completely on their own (and would have at any time in history), and sometimes it's just the way history unfolds.

[falco]

Without them? Gates will participate in his newest adventure - ship building. When his buddy Baby Bush puts his blessing on offshore drilling in the US, shipswill need to be built to accommodate this endeavor. Enter Bill Gates.

[KillTheMessenger]

What will we do without them? We will finally have the products we need, not the products they want to sell to us.

[EinChicago]

The irony is that this comes from a man who proudly proclaims his unnatural semi-sexual fetish for the Prius, a substandard hybrid propped up by Toyota imitating Microsoft exactly and buying up teh battery supply.

[KillTheMessenger]

The Prius is NOT the product I want. It just happens to be the best AVAILABLE product for the purpose I have. It comes somewhat close to what I need (another 60mpg more and we are kind of there).

See, Ein, unlike you I (have to) live in the real world. I use whatever tools work (which is why I use a PC and not a Mac), no matter how much I hate them. But, again, the PC is the best AVAILABLE product for my computing needs. Windows is not, neither is Linux. But Linux is getting closer to what I need and Windows is getting further away, just like hybrids are getting closer to and SUVs are getting further away from my transportation needs.

Oh, well. Maybe one day you will wake up and learn to see the world in colors. For now you seem to be stuck with a black and white set.

[darthdarcy]

Stalin I think said," The graveyards are full of indispensable men.."

Actually Gates leaving could be for the best for all, since his stuff doesn't work..