Good question (and your answer too.)
Gates didn't (doesn't) have the drive. Look, he took the money and ran to Africa carrying mosquito nets, another guilt ridden liberal. Jobs if he lived and by some odd chance got fired again from Apple, would have gone on to start another company, right? Gates didn't so much conceptualize and invent as he stole. Gates gave us deeply flawed products, and over engineered products (Office). Gates was (isn't no more) a geek, while Jobs was, as many have observed, an artist.
“Gates didn’t (doesn’t) have the drive.”
He had different drive, is all. Gates wanted all the money in the world, which he got. Jobs wanted to change the world, which he did. Once you achieve the one, there’s nowhere to go. If you’re the world’s richest man, that’s it. No one cares if you get richer. But if you’re always chasing down the Next Big Thing to further your worldwide Church of Technology, you can always keep growing, which people notice.
“Jobs was, as many have observed, an artist”
Relative to Gates, yes. But not really. Wozniak was an artist, of a sort. Jobs was more the visonary/seer/guru.
Why is it that people need to bolster great businessmen, especially, by comparing them to other fields? Why isn’t it enough that Jobs was one of the world’s best CEOs since the ‘70s, instead of an artist?