I think your average geek used to be like, somewhat academic and erudite and into arcane knowledge and had some level of good faith of wanting to engage in discussion
Now it’s all frauds and absolutely braindead elon stans and crypto dipshits and conservative freaks and people who enjoy and defend watching big tech destroy everything.
apple started with stuff done by woz. googles algorithims came from their founders. gates bought but put a lot into it. hardware companies where engineering firms. google is the only one where its product was not bought and owned by the user (mostly) but they basically set the stage for flipping the whole thing on its head with the user being the product. this further set the stage for the idea is that if you get the people into your ecosystem then it will be to hard to compete as people are lazy and don’t want to change. this lead to emphasis not being on the tech but instead on building the monopoly.
Microsoft in the late 90s was an acquisition machine, but the roots of Microsoft were 100% Bill Gates and Paul Allen being computer savants legitimately trying to push the boundaries of human technology past is limits.
. . . and forcing people to pay, through relentless licensing schemes.
What they created wasn’t great, it was standard fare. Their “genius” was in ruthlessly demanding you didn’t own what they made, you only got to run it by paying tribute. It worked.
Other systems and hardware from that era were either absorbed or destroyed because microsoft becamse a monopoly quickly, and used that power to do so.
What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
Not to diss Gates or Allen, but neither is a savant of any kind.
Their first product was a BASIC interpreter for a very early Microprocessor, which they wrote without ever getting their hands on the hardware (because the Altair 8800 was basically vaporware at the time, with no software there was no demand), and Paul Alien wrote the bootloader for the program on the flight to the product demonstration.
Frankly, that sounds like legit computer wizardry to me. Yes, they made their billions on business more than tech, but they were legit tech guys at the start.
Legit tech guys, sure.
You called them “computer savants legitimately trying to push the boundaries of human technology past is limits” [sic] in the previous comment and that is what I was calling out.
You sounded like an awed cultist talking about their leader!