Bill Gates is such an asshole.
That’s not what I think, but a lot of people do. In fact the level of vitriol directed towards Bill Gates and Microsoft is really quite mind-boggling considering that the man has given away tens of millions of dollars of his own money to charities funding AIDS prevention, agriculture in third world countries, college scholarships, and other causes, mostly through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which as an organization donates over 1.5 billion dollars a year to charitable causes. What’s more, the organization has a shelf life, it will close within 50 years after Bill and Melinda die, thereby ensuring it does not become a monster that eats up funds just to maintain its existence. As a result of all this, he was TIME magazine’s person of the year in 2005.
But despite the fact that Bill Gates has recently retired from Microsoft in order to devote more time to running the foundation and philanthropic work, people still think he’s an asshole. Or, more accurately, unsuccessful people with negative attitudes think he’s an asshole.
I use Windows. I like Windows. Windows does everything a Macintosh computer does, and it does it cheaper. Windows can be installed and will run on any PC, even one you build yourself. As a result dozens of companies build windows PC’s which has led to increased competition and cheaper prices. If Apple had won the war, there would only be one computer company and we would all be paying an arm and a leg for them. Actually more likely, Apple would have been the subject of anti-trust lawsuits instead of Microsoft, and would have been forced to license its OS to other computer makers in the same way that Microsoft did voluntarily.
Is Microsoft perfect? Hell no. But they are far less evil than a certain search engine with a candy coloured logo.