Bill Gates.
While Steve Jobs was creating things, Bill Gates was repurposing existing technologies and strategies and improving on them. For all intents as purposes, if there had been no Steve Jobs, IBM, Xerox, etc., there may have never been a Bill Gates as we know him. That luck of technological progression timing back then and the right-place-right-time with regards to competitor's developments and progress cannot be overlooked or underappreciated.
Being heavily into the tech industry from a young age, I was a huge Steve Jobs fan growing up and greatly respected his skills and understanding of the tech industry. That said, I am not a fan boy of Apple products. In fact, I mainly used Microsoft products, especially DOS/Windows because they were geared more toward technically inclined people back then compared to Apple which was focused more on less technical and more operational use at that time. These days, that line has blurred of course.
So, why did I say Bill Gates and not Steve Jobs here? Simple. Gates benefited from and improved on work, technology and business strategies of others, while Jobs along with Wozniak, focused more on creating new technologies and new ways of thinking. In other words, Jobs created more of his success himself, while Gates relied on others' success to create his success.
On a side note, I think it is quite commendable what Gates has done as a philanthropist since leaving Microsoft, though I believe a lot of that was initiated and driven by his wife, Melinda. Then again, there he goes again taking something someone else started and improving on it. *laughs* I do believe Jobs would have transitioned into more of a philanthropist role had he lived longer, but on some level, I think Jobs went out the way he came in, albeit sooner than he or most would have liked.
