Bill Gates - End of an Era or Beginning of a New One?

Its official, Bill Gates is retiring. David who became Goliath is riding off into the sunset.

Love him or hate him, one thing remains. Bill Gates was a phenom who will never be duplicated. I dont know if the industry would have been the same without Microsoft. Ya Ya, I know they copied everything from Apple, Lotus etc, but so did a lot of people. Wonder where they went.

I think back to the late 80's when Windows was released (the pre-cursor to Windows 3.1). The interface was clugy, programming on it was difficult but it was a big change from what we were using then.. DUMB TERMINALS.

Microsoft made the IT industry global. IBM, HP et all might have been around before Microsoft, but they were far behind Gates who made software a "commodity" available to everyone. Not just big business users.