Steve Jobs: As American as Apple Pie

I got the GAH reference. And now I have Joey Scarbury's "Believe or Not" stuck in my head. Thanks, I really appreciate that :-p

Finally someone got my GAH reference!

First, I commend you on your Greatest American Hero reference. Second, is this for modern peopl or just any American? In which case the choices actually narrow. FDR and Jefferson would lead the pack in my list of choices.

Did Martin Luther King produce a user-friendly, visually stunning GUI interface to a rock-solid Unix operating system? Did John F. Kennedy convince the world to pay $99 for a flash-based MP3 player with no screen? Bring me some *real* contenders, please!

So you think Jobs has had more impact than Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy? A little light in the head, aren't ya?

I know you'll hate to admit it, but to be completely objective, Bill Gates has had a much bigger "impact on the way we think, work and live" than Steve Jobs. (Save the "yeah in a bad way!" snipes for another article, please.) I'm not trolling, but look at things objectively. The Steves brought a great hobby computer and turned it into a great educational and home system. Apple then brought brought the GUI to people's attention with the IIgs and Mac. Much later, Jobs turned Apple around and put the Mac back at the front of interface design. Gates/Microsoft brought MS-DOS to the market. HUGE in business, and HUGE at home. Then they released Windows to bring a GUI to the open market. MSOffice is basically The App that millions of office workers know... the biggest success story in the business world, possibly. Windows drove the processor wars as hardware lagged to catch up to every new version. Windows' position as the Cheap Home Computer drove the Linux movement with cheap hardware for hobbyists and a (suprisingly) stable x86 architecture mandated by the Windows benchmark. You can't attribute all of that to Steve Jobs OR Bill Gates of course, but if you're saying who has had a bigger impact on the computing landscape, it IS Bill Gates. Of course, in the past few years, Jobs has had a BETTER impact on the computing world, IMHO, and is certainly the current media darling.

Lincoln Schmincoln. Did Abe invent the iPod? No. Did Abe give us the 15" 1.67GHz PowerBook with Sudden Motion Sensor and shiny, oh-so-shiny case? No. Case closed.

Ok now you've really gone off the deep end. Steve Jobs...greatest American?? Look Apple is a great company but my vote goes to Abraham Lincoln....