Walter Isaacson: Bill Gates Was 'Conventionally Smarter' Than Steve Jobs

What made Steve Jobs special?

It wasn't the smarts, according to Walter Isaacson, the author of a recent biography of Jobs.

Isaacson argued that another tech titan, Bill Gates, was "conventionally smarter" than Jobs, but lacked the Apple co-founder's artistic instincts. He likened Jobs to two of his other subjects, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, because all three innovators succeeded at marrying "emotion" and "aesthetics" with technology.

"Smart people are a dime a dozen," Isaacson said at a PCMag.com event hosted Monday evening in New York City. "What matters is the ability to think different [...] to think out of the box."

Though Gates' open approach to software clashed with Jobs' quest for complete control over a device and its operating system, Isaacson maintained that the greatest difference between the two men was not philosophical, but personal: Gates lacked the Apple co-founder's artistic inclinations.

"I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it's a dumb word., but mental processing power -- I've watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom," said Isaacson. "He didn't have the aesthetic feel or that control freakiness that comes from an artist sensibility that Steve had."

Before his death in October, Jobs leveled similar criticisms at Gates.

"Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology," Jobs said, according to Isaacson’s biography. "He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Gates dismissed Jobs' reproaches in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, maintaining that "none of that bothers me at all" and that Jobs "said a lot of very nice things about me and he said a lot of tough things."

Isaacson recounted a visit Gates paid to Jobs at the end of his life and noted that Jobs' youngest daughter Eve, then 11 years old, didn’t know who Gates was.

While Gates and Jobs eventually acknowledged that both of their approaches had merit, Isaacson noted that Jobs never dropped his grudge against Adobe after its refusal, in 1997, to develop programs for Apple devices.

Not a single mobile device from Apple could run Adobe Flash, a program used to play video and other multimedia, and last week, nineteen months after the iPad's release, Adobe announced that it would cease developing the mobile version of Flash.

“If you’re wondering why last week they [Adobe] gave up on Flash, it’s not because Flash is a spaghetti bowl piece of technology,” said Isaacson. “Steve Jobs was never going to let Flash on any Apple product again like that after in 1997 -- he’s got a long memory -- they said no and Bill Gates said yes."

Comments

[random2012]

08:13 PM on 11/22/2012

I love how insightful Walter Isaacson is. I just wish he could write a book about Bill Gates too. It would be a tremendous contribution to the human history, just like his brilliant book Steve Jobs. As of Bill and Steve, I think they both created amazing products. Bill develped products that empowered billions of people productivity-wise while Steve created products of love and expanded our world intuitively. They both deserve our respect.

[Tiziano Puiatti]

06:04 PM on 01/13/2012

"....but it does look like it's been designed in Uzbekistan or some place..." - what an ignorant and non-sensical remark and unexpected from an author who one would hope is rather more worldly. Has Isaacson ever been to Tashkent? He could have found an infinitely more appropriate way of saying something that is not attractively designed.

[Fred Taylor]

01:00 PM on 11/19/2011

I'll take being conventionally smart and being generous enough to be a philanthropist over being artistic any day of the week.

[Billionairechronicles]

07:21 PM on 11/17/2011

Bill Gates and Tony Soprano have something in common. They're both "involved" in waste management
http://www.billionairechronicles.net/what-can-a-billionaire-buy/like-tony-soprano-bill-gates-invests-in-trash

[mekennedy1313]

01:26 PM on 11/16/2011

Of course, that's why gates had to copy things like the GUI from Apple, the office product from lotus and wordperfect, Internet explorer from Netscape etc. Brilliant copier and creater of software that almost works but never an original thought in his head! Smarter??? BAH!

[boybunny]

10:14 PM on 11/16/2011

Thats why Jobs copied the first of his OSs from Xerox Parc... and then spent the next couple of decades shamelessly stealing (hundreds of) ideas and features and later just picking the bones of the Amigas Workbench after he helped bury a far more advanced computer and operating system. Jobs also shamelessly copied more of the people he admired like the head designer of Braun from the fifties.

Jobs was no artist. I am an artist. Jobs was a hack at best and someone who plagiarised ideas and took credit (and profit) for other peoples hard work at worst. One day I will piss on the arseholes grave.

[random2012]

07:38 PM on 11/22/2012

You really shouldn't. You haven't changed billions of people's lives with products of love.

[Layman23]

12:50 PM on 11/16/2011

I think Steve Wozniak or Bill Joy were smarter than any of them. But the point of smartness comes along when you are developing something all by yourself. Jobs and Gates had vision, very diverse and distant, but they had the vision and the drive, which none of the others had.

You can always argue that for all the smartness of gates, why we were seeing BSOD's etc.. vs a *non that smart* jobs where his OS always seemed to work without glitches.

I am not saying one is better over the other. As the author himself pointed out, there are many smart people around, but it takes one to get them together and make something out of their dreams.

[Fred Taylor]

01:06 PM on 11/19/2011

You clearly don't have a clue about how operating system work. Windows has BSODs when a hardware component malfunctions. Windows is installed on computers with literally tens of millions of different hardware configurations. It's actually pretty damn amazing the OS can support so many different kinds of hardware.

[maruawe]

12:11 PM on 11/16/2011

While in the IQ department Bill Gates may have been higher but the fact the Steve Jobs was the best inventor and artist of the two men... Brains alone is not always the best for inventors or artist. A person that finds a niche and fills the dreams of millions with innovative toys and gadgets is by far the one to follow.

[Fred Taylor]

01:07 PM on 11/19/2011

Inventor? Bwahahaha! What did Jobs ever invent?

[John Zaffino]

08:04 AM on 11/16/2011

I have to agree that Apple products appeal more to the artistic side of me than anything by microsoft, but this is not the only reason I prefer them. They just seem more intuitively user friendly. I had a Droid 2 before I got an iPhone. It did most of the things that the iPhone did, but the iPhone was just easier to use, from unlocking it, to taking a picture, to making a simple phone call, the Apple device just was very simple to use as compared to the Droid. The Droid is very nice, but it just does not compare. The same goes for a Mac compared to a PC. A Mac just does everything easier and faster.. from loading to searching the web, not to mention their support team is based in the US and is consumer friendly. The other companies would do well to study Apple's business model. I can only hope that, with Steve Jobs gone, Apple will continue to follow the path that he plotted for them.

[marydianeg]

07:06 AM on 11/16/2011

Imagination is more important than intelligence
~ Albert Einstein

[Layman23]

12:51 PM on 11/16/2011

Nailed it.

[Fred Taylor]

01:08 PM on 11/19/2011

Imagination with no intelligence is a waste of time.

[jabailo]

04:02 AM on 11/16/2011

Bill Gates is definitely smarter than a dead guy.

No one will doubt it.

[GoDogGo]

03:32 AM on 11/16/2011

I believe the word is "creativity." There's a ton of different kinds of definitions for "smart" but few seem to recognize that each kind of intelligence is different. Emotional, logical and creative intelligence manifest themselves in different ways and are appropriate for many different industries, cultures or situations. To me, Jobs was an excellent example of the visionary intelligence people will need to use more of as we progress through the 21st Century.

[RoughCollie]

02:57 AM on 11/16/2011

If he's comparing Steve Jobs to Benjamin Franklin, he's saying he had AD/HD and was a creative genius.

[Marc Rieckman]

01:53 AM on 11/16/2011

they were basically like brothers in the sence they alwas were trying to out do each other. They had there rivalries and little fights but in all they respected eachother. How ever I do have to agree It is one thing to be just smart and a different thing to think out side the box but its the 2 sides of the same coin yin yang its a package deal but its a good deal:).

[bobdylansgrandmother]

12:10 AM on 11/16/2011

what does it matter who was smarter! they both spent their lives doing something they loved, they may have started on the same path but ended on different ones, changed the way the majority of the world live and were very successful...

[Estevan Benson]

12:09 AM on 11/16/2011

Smart people are not a dime a dozen.