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As a hotheaded youth he became the living icon of the PC revolution. Then came a flameout that was equally spectacular. But Steve Jobs' third act has been the most stunning of all. This fall the Pixar chairman and interim-ad-infinitum CEO of Apple smacked a bases-clearing double: Pixar's Toy Story 2 broke Thanksgiving box-office records, garnering $81 million in five days, while Apple unveiled the iBook and reborn iMac. Jobs seems to have acquired a Midas touch. Apple's stock gained nearly 200% this year, and Pixar is now tweaking the storyboards for its next film, Monsters, Inc. Calmer and wiser, Jobs is getting people to think different once again.
Joel Klein and Bill Gates
Antitrust division chiefs are an obscure lot, toiling anonymously over fusty treatises and recondite appellate briefs. But with his epic lawsuit against the software empire Microsoft this year, Joel Klein stepped into the floodlights, part trust-busting Ida Tarbell, part Goliath-slaying David. Microsoft's fate remains in the air, but Klein has already changed corporate history: no other company will ever write e-mail so recklessly or save it so efficiently. Gates, the other gladiator in this legal coliseum, has long been a household name. But the antitrust lawsuit--and the media frenzy it generated--has cast him in a new light and set off a national debate: Is the world's richest man a national treasure or an $85 billion bully? Log on to a chat room and take a side.