Steve Ballmer - Visionary.

[BlueStreak]

8. Garrison Keillor once had a joke about a doctor who specialized

in "diseases of the rich".

That is the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Jobs was brilliant in creating what amounts to a religion of people who were willing to grossly overpay in order to be in the club. I never would have thought this could be successful on such a sustained basis, but it was.

When you compare the two companies, Microsoft has made a far greater impact on society, essentially transforming the whole world of IT over the past 30 years. Everything Apple has offered, other than iTunes, is just a gussied-up, priced-up version of a product that had already been in the market for years.

Many of the world's business run on Microsoft technology. Most of the desktops do. The one thing Microsoft didn't do is create the love for their products.