By 1995, Bill Gates was at the peak of his power. Microsoft had come a fort — vast, effective, and putatively untouchable. Windows 95 had just launched, and the world treated it like a artistic event. Lines wrapped around electronics stores. Commercials blasted the Rolling monuments’ “ Start Me Up. ” Ordinary people who had noway used a computer before suddenly wanted one, and nearly every one of those machines ran Microsoft software. For Gates, it was exculpation — two decades of preoccupation distilled into a product that defined a generation. But the irony was sharp just as Microsoft reached the top, the next great technological revolution was forming beneath its bases. And Gates, for all his brilliance,