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Yesterday Apple passed Microsoft to become, for the first time, the "world's most valuable technology company," according to the New York Times. Apple gained a stock-based valuation of $222.12 billion while Microsoft's was $219.18 billion.

Does this make Steve Jobs the Bill Gates of technology?

Although Microsoft is still a powerful and important company, it has been skating on its Windows operating system and Office productivity suite for a long time. In an op-ed, a former Microsoft vice president called it "a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator" with a monolithic culture, characterized more by politics than technology."

Since moving to New York from London in 1990, I have become a firm convert to the idea that New York is the center of the universe. London, Paris, Berlin, Mumbai are all pretty great, but if you like cities, New York is it. So it has always been a source of frustration for me - and other New Yorkers - that our great city is such a slouch when it comes to high tech startups compared to boring suburbs like San Jose and Palo Alto, and even provincial towns such as Boston and Austin. Well, I finally figured out the problem. It's called Wall Street.