? ? Steve Jobs.

(Prompted by rumors of the Apple iSlate/iPad, about which more later. And by low level software bugs* on the Google Droid.)

I have always been and still am a big Apple fan.

I can’t say much for Microsoft and Bill Gates — they have brought technology to the masses, but it’s messy inelegant stuff. Who really wants to know that much about video cards, chips and C: drives? Life is too short.

And Google, when you think about it, had one good idea, their search algorithm. And now they live by advertising. They’re a middleman. They get paid for placing ads as they take you to other people’s content, other people who aren’t getting paid for the content. Nothing to be that proud of, though standing up to the Chinese Capitocommunists is.

Bankers, too, are middlemen, mysteriously paid for things you can’t put a name or clear function to.

But Apple, that’s another story. Many good ideas. Mostly brought to fruition through technical innovation and management. Yes, I know they copied a lot of it from Xerox Parc.

Steve Jobs and Apple have produced things people want, things you can name, things people are willing to pay for with their own bucks. They changed the way things are done, and are paid for what they bring to the table.

They’re cooks, not waiters.

More jobs.

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* that result in frequent black-out freezes followed by pop-up UNIX-flavored messages like “Sorry! The application Email (process com.android.email) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Force close”.