“So what does Steve Jobs have to say about Microsoft’s founder? We went looking, and have compiled a list of Steve Jobs’ best quotes about Bill Gates,” Smith reports. “The claws come out as Jobs challenges Gates’s creativity and criticizes aspects of Microsoft’s business. But the Apple CEO also softens up, likens their relationship to matrimony, and speaks fondly of the legacy Gates will leave”
Smith reports, “There’s even a cute video from a 1983 Apple event when Gates ‘woos’ Jobs during a company-sponsored dating game.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The damage Bill Gates did to world productivity by greedily inflicting The Dark Age of Personal Computing upon the planet is incalculable and criminal.
What MDN said. Times TWO.
Ironic how into Republican and Libertarian ideas folks can be when it serves them, but when Microsoft uses freedom and business skills to succeed it’s criminal.
@Nerd
Republican Ideas are popular now? haha… since when?
@ Nerd Beau…
Monopolies and monopolistic practices are in fact the opposite of a libertarian ideas.
I will also mention that no one is immune from making mistakes when the theory begins to be applied in reality. No one is perfect.
@Nerd Beautiful: Anything that gets big enough will try locking others out of their turf to preserve their positions and/or income with a minimum of effort. Why innovate when you have no competition? Especially noticeable in business (see: Internet Exploder, recording and movie industries), but also happens in politics (ruling party becomes complacent), criminal organizations… basically any human community.
It is unprintable and libelous what I think of Bill Gates!
Such words should be spoken around children and pregnant women.
@Nerd I am with you! As always MDN is full of %#*%!! They can’t handle the fact Microsoft ran a better business. Let’s also talk about Monopolies which Apple has in music and music players!
Bill Gates founded a company that, despite its flaws, became highly successful in terms of generating profits. As the company grew, B.G. importance gradually waned as the company became more massive. The fact that the company did not and does not have leadership with the inspiration or vision of Jobs does not necessarily make it something to be reviled, although its documented monopolistic abuses speak of bloated and misguided egos desperate to “stay on top” despite the cost.
I despise Microsoft products – particularly the Office Suite and Exchange server/client products. Those are the bane of every Mac user in most corporate and government organizations. But B.G. is, at least, pursuing the course of a philanthropist in his retirement years, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt for that positive move. Balmer, on the other hand, is a fairly worthless parasite that even Microsoft doesn’t deserve. It is truly hard for me to believe that the shareholders continue to put up with his incompetence. He has such a good strategy…and he likes it a lot.
Gates has been so past tense for so long, it’s insulting to even continue trying to compare him to Jobs.
Yes, macs have greater productivity for most sectors, but who knows how long it would have taken apple to turn the pc into an affordable mass market device. Even a few years delay entails a huge hit on productivity, because even a windows computer beats no computer at all
Kenny, Kenny, Kenny, perhaps you`ve heard of boot-loader lock in? or the fact if ANY OEM dared put another OS on their machines the “deal” that MS gave them with Windows would instantly evaporate? As I recall there`s no one strong arming you into an ipod like MS is doing with ALL PC makers (go try to buy an HP or Acer etc without the Windows license, I did, no dice you HAVE to buy it like it or not). Don`t like the ipod, fine, there`s Creative, Cowon, MPIO, Iriver, Sandisk and the list goes on, why don`t you go get one of those? Need to get music online? try Amazon or any of the other ones. I hear even Google`s jumping into it soon, so where`s this monopoly you`re talking about? Sounds to me Apple just ran a better business no?
LOL.. he said he needed to drop acid… let him hang with me.. I will have him thinking he is on fire, I will make him stop, drop and roll!
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KingMel:
Not that hard to believe when you consider they’re the same shareholders that think the world of Microsoft products….they like t a lot too.
@Nerd Beautiful:
STFU, moron.
@Ken:
A moron who can type… Fascinating!
Not much productivity happens without engineering. The productivity Excel has provided to engineering far outweighs any that is lost due to Windows. There is still no capable replacement for Excel. This cannot be argued.
M$ got lucky because Apple, IBM and all the clone manufacturers handed them the monopoly they needed.
Apple later dropped the ball in the 90’s by letting Windows catch up with the MacOS system.
Things are only changing now because the PC format is becoming less relevant. Apple are making more money than ever on Macs, but they earn 2-3 time more on their non-Mac mobile products. M$ will continue to make 10s of billions of Windows and Office for several more years but they have no answer for new mobile products that will minimize the need for PCs in the future.
MDN opinion is crazy. MSFT didn’t put us in any “dark age.” We all have benefited from Windows, like to hear it or not.
Everyone had the choice to buy Apple products all along and there were some really strong reasons not to until pretty recently, so MDN… GET OVER IT.
We may think we have the best products but we don’t have all the good ones and the fanboy knee JERK reaction to everything not Apple is very counter productive! Grow UP!!!
I have several hours of video showing Bill Gates being deposed by an Attorney General, around the time of August 27, 1998. He looks very defeated in these videos. What is quite evident is, he’d rather be someplace else more than anything in the world.
Although we see flashes of his arrogance and defiance in the face of his prosecutors, his company, and him by proxy, was ultimately convicted of abusing its power.
The delusional, like Ken and Nerd B, conveniently overlook that aspect of Microsoft’s history.
Monopolies are not new, nor are they illegal. Many successful businesses today are thriving in a monopolistic environment. But Microsoft, who muscled their partners into turning their backs on potential threats to Gates’s PC domain, thus marginalizing their presence in the market, couldn’t kill off Apple because, by the time they had finished off the threats to their PC monopoly, the government had already taken an interest in Microsoft’s business activities.
Knowing they were in the white-hot spotlight of Justice, Gates extended an olive branch to Apple in the form of 150 mln dollars along with a promise to continue supporting Office for Mac.
If Bill Gates had proceeded with his plan to cut Office from the Mac platform in 1997, they would have handed the DOJ a solid case for breaking up Microsoft, the same way the government broke up AT&T and Standard Oil.
To watch Bill Gates twist and squirm like a little girl who has to pee, is quite intriguing.
The most powerful man in the world, a genius by some’s standards, was evasive, arrogant, ignorant, and at times, came across like a stooge, but the thing that was apparent was, Bill Gates resented being peppered by a group of prosecutors who couldn’t speak in Gates’ native tongue; using technology nomenclature improperly, making irreconcilable associations between various products and services, while trying to trap this genius into flubbing up. It didn’t work and after what seemed like months of talking, I think he caved into their dauntless questioning, just to get it over with.
I wonder if Bill Gates thought he would do to the government, what Howard Hughes did during his congressional hearing; make them look foolish in front of the television cameras?
He and his company are convicted felons and that is not the way he wants to be remembered.
I can’t wait for Steve Jobs’ personal biography to hit the stands. I’m sure he’ll have plenty to say about his relationship with Gates and Microsoft.
There was alway a choice. Steve is a better manager now than in 1985.
I just moments ago heard on the radio one of those “call in with your computer problems” shows.
An elderly-sounding woman called in because her Windows Vista machine was stuck in a reboot cycle.
The guy was telling her 1) unplug it for a while, and if that doesn’t work 2) open up the machine (!) and take out the graphics card then put it back in, and 3) find a computer that DID work and go to the microsoft support site and learn to be a computer expert herself, basically.
And I’m listening to this getting angrier and angrier at Microsoft’s legacy. Thanks Bill.
The expert never said “Get a mac,” (or even “have your kids set up a linux box,” which I did for my mom and she used it for 4 years before she went mac).
Good thing the caller saved ALL THAT MONEY by not buying a mac.
Tom O’Connell doesn’t get it.
The Parallel port is but one example of how Microsoft stunted the growth of the computer revolution.
That one port alone, was responsible for the delay of other, more efficient and faster I/O, because all of the giant corporations who had invested millions of dollars in Parallel port products refused to replace it all with untested I/O, like SCSI and USB.
Look at how long it took Microsoft to recognize 64-bit computing, something that had been available for years, in smaller vertical markets.
Look how long it took for Microsoft to recognize anything more than 3.5 GB’s of RAM.
Microsoft refused to not only recognize these products, but they developed Catch-22’s in them by refusing to develop supporting software until they became more prevalent on the hardware platform. I mean, how stupid can you be?
@Mark S….should be spoken????
@buzzy
Steve is a better manager now than in 1985.
That’s right. He had to go away and do some growing up before he could take the helm once again of his beloved company. I don’t think he could have accomplished that without the strong force in Avi Tevanian, who remained at his side to provide the cutting narrative, even as NeXT was going down the shitter.
I have no doubt, Steve Jobs will give credit in his book, to those like Tevanian, who never pulled their punches and showed him that the correlation between his destructive choices and the downfall of everything he held dear, would continue until he accepted responsibility for the power his choices.
We all know the feeling of having experienced the relentless guidance from those who never gave up on us, even when we were at the worst, and lowest point in our lives. We also know we couldn’t possibly return the favor in their lifetime, so we continue marching forward carrying their voices in our head.
In the end, I believe Steve Jobs will give all the credit to those who were relentlessly honest with him; who never lost their tempers as he flailed around like a spoiled child; who withstood an explosive barrage of hurtful accusations and temper tantrums in some bizarre litmus test of loyalty; never wavering or deviating, from that which Jobs himself held dear, bringing simple joy to the world.
If Bill Gates finds a cure for malaria, I’ll forgive him for Windows.