I agree that there are two different cultures at work here. One, that of PARC and Bell Labs, was foundational. The other, of MS and Apple, are transformative.
It is with the foundational work of folks like dmr that the 80s era computing companies were able to gain traction in the first place. Don't misunderstand, I'm don't mean to lessen the importance of the contributions Jobs has made to the computing industry, but he didn't live in a vacuum.
The idea that Apple, Microsoft, others, were built on the foundations set down buy the computing pioneers of the 60s and 70s is, perhaps, no more than recognition, and respect to the importance of that foundational research.
It is with the foundational work of folks like dmr that the 80s era computing companies were able to gain traction in the first place. Don't misunderstand, I'm don't mean to lessen the importance of the contributions Jobs has made to the computing industry, but he didn't live in a vacuum.
The idea that Apple, Microsoft, others, were built on the foundations set down buy the computing pioneers of the 60s and 70s is, perhaps, no more than recognition, and respect to the importance of that foundational research.