Where Bill Gates bests Steve Jobs, and always has, is in his willingness to build ecosystems.
Windows is an ecosystem. Microsoft is the biggest fish in that ecosystem. Since 1995, Windows has been eating the other fish in that ecosystem, but fish do that. It's still an ecosystem.
Apple has never been comfortable with living in an ecosystem. Apple builds products, not ecosystems. There were never any second-source Macintosh hardware producers with Jobs in charge, and they were all killed off when he returned.
You will never see Steve Jobs, or any of his lieutenants, jumping around a stage yelling "developers, developers, developers, developers." It's not going to happen.
But if it did, if Jobs ever learned to share, imagine the threat he'd be then?
Here's an example of how he can.
There are already tons of great applications for the iPod that Apple never thought of. Map application, comics applications, WiFi applications. Someone even ran Linux on the thing.
Apple's general attitude toward all this ranges from indifference to contempt.
This is stupid. Jobs seems to think that if he doesn't invent it, it doesn't exist, or shouldn't exist in his space. This is also stupid.
A monoculture is not an ecosystem. A vibrant ecosystem consists of many different species, of different types, living in a variety of niches.
Jobs' idea of ecology is a cornfield. It doesn't work in nature, and it doesn't work in technology.
He's asking to get beat. Again.
The best product doesn't win in the long run. In technology, the best ecosystem wins. Markets evolve. Think of developers as evolution in action.