Latest Bill: Apple or Microsoft?

Bill Smith looks at what it is to be cool in today’s society and says it’s far better to be making a difference like Bill Gates than wanting to be on TOWIE

Everybody these days seems to want to be cool. This week The Huffington Post gave us a list of the top ten coolest guys in the UK.

The Cool List
• Robbie Savage
• Professor Green
• Karl Pilkington
• Jack Whitehall
• Joe Thomas
• Noel Gallagher
• Prince Harry
• Jenson Button
• Matt Smith
• Dynamo

Part of me wants to be on that list. But what does this list say about coolness and about our society? No doctors on the list. No inventors. No scientists. No philanthropists. Frankly, nobody who’s ever done any good for the world. Sorry List, but those who make people laugh or dance or make records or pontificate about football are not great role models. So why have we made them so important? And it’s not just boys. Seems like every girl wants to be Cheryl Cole and marry a footballer, or be on TOWIE. I bet more of them know who Rihanna is than Marie Curie.

Terminally un-hip
Once upon a time there was a company called Microsoft. It was run by a guy called Bill Gates. He and his company were terminally un-hip. Cool people don’t like Windows. Cool people do like Apple – iPads, iPods, iMac, iPhone. I think cool Apple lovers are so smitten that they’d buy iOverpriced, iJunk or iSawyoucoming. I have to say though, I do own an iPad and an iPhone with an iPod on it. So iConfess.

Enough of my cool witticisms – look out Jack Whitehall, I’m coming – and back to the serious business. The man who made Apple the coolest tech company in the world was Steve Jobs and yes, we do owe him a lot. What a marketing man, and what a designer. And Apple has helped the world, as has Microsoft.

Bill Gates is a saint
As I said, Bill Gates was never cool but Bill Gates has done more to cure malaria than any other person who has ever walked the planet. He’s not cool, he’s a saint. He is the role model, surely, for everyone. He developed something great for the world, he made billions of dollars from that invention and he then spent every dollar on trying to make the world a better place. Bill Gates, with his wife Melinda, has devoted much of his time and money in the last few years to the Roll Back Malaria group. In Senegal the number of malaria cases went down by 41 per cent in a single year.

As is the case with all infectious diseases, the ultimate tool is a
low-cost vaccine and his foundation is developing one – this is in its final phase. Turkmenistan and Morocco are now completely malaria-free. The death toll in Africa has gone down from close to a million in 2000 to around 700,000 in 2012. And why? Because of increased donor spending which reached $1.5 billion in 2009. And guess where much of this came from?

Unsexy but cool
It’s not just malaria. We are on the threshold of ending polio once and for all. And again that is greatly helped by Bill Gates’ donation of $200 million every year.

So I could write my top ten cool people. It wouldn’t be very sexy. It wouldn’t be frothy. There wouldn’t be that many jokes. Liam Gallagher definitely wouldn’t be on it. But it might actually mean a lot more to a lot more. Think about it.

Bill Smith is Managing Editor of Latest 7/Homes magazine and
a director of Latest TV. n