“One of the few people to understand [Bill Gates’] compulsions was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who died of cancer in October. The two men’s long and stormy relationship has been chronicled in Jobs’s latest biography, but, until now, Gates has said little about their divisions – and their bonds,” Mary Riddell reports for The Telegraph. “‘Steve was an incredible genius who contributed immensely to the field I was in. We had periods, like the early Macintosh, when we had more people working on it than they did. And then we were competitors. The personal computers I worked on had a vastly higher [market] share than Apple until really the last five or six years, where Steve’s very good work on the Mac and on iPhones and iPads did extremely well. It’s quite an achievement, and we enjoyed each [other’s work].'”
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s Steve “enjoying” Gates’ work:
Riddell reports, “This tribute, part praise, part reminder of Gates’s dominance, is more tactful than the comments Jobs made in his lifetime. ‘He spent a lot of his time competing with me. There are lots of times when Steve said [critical] things about me. If you took the more harsh examples, you could get quite a litany.'”
“The atmosphere changed in 2007 when Gates left Microsoft to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife,” Riddell reports. “‘Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer… I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year.’ Some months before Jobs died, Gates paid him a long visit. ‘We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future.’ Later, with his old adversary’s death imminent, he wrote to him. ‘I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know.'”
Riddell reports, “That last gesture was not, he says, conciliatory. ‘There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.’ After Jobs’s death, Gates received a phone call from his wife, Laurene. ‘She said; ‘Look, this biography really doesn’t paint a picture of the mutual respect you had.’ And she said he’d appreciated my letter and kept it by his bed.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
I keep the Windows 7 EULA by my bedside. If I die in my sleep I want people to think that Microsoft killed me.
LMAO! Thanks! 😀
LOL!!! ups! I think I snapped a rib laughing! LOL!!!!!
+ 10
Love it!!
@Spark…this is the reason why I keep coming back to MDN to read the comments.
Well played sir!
Two great guys. Immense respect for both of them.
I think it’s fair to say that both mellowed as they aged.
20 & 30 somethings can be such idiots. That is how we mostly remember Steve & Bill.
I am not on the same page with you, Sterling. Bill and his team accomplished quite a bit and made a lot of money. But it would be a big stretch for me to call Gates a “great guy.” I can’t go that far.
Agreed. Both contributed hugely, in different ways. Jobs was a visionary genius, and Gates has donated huge amounts of money to humanitarian causes.
Thinking he was surely headed for Hell for all his thievery, cheating and misery he thrust upon the world via his Microslothian Empire, Bill began to donate huge sums of money to buy his way into Heaven before it was too late. 😉
The thing that really bothers me when Gates speaks about Jobs is that he can never, ever keep it about Jobs. He always has to work his “contributions” into the quote, like he always has to put his work and Microsoft’s legacy on the same plane as Apple.
When you speak about Jobs, you’re not sharing company, Bill. You’re not in the same zip code, not even the same planet.
You gotta respect both of them’s contributions.
They are in the same league but did it differently.
What did Bill Gates contribute? Help me out here. I’m drawing a blank.
The art of copying. I believe Eric Schmidt took Gates’ Copying 101 course sometime in 2007. 😉
that would make a good tshirt design, thanx
So SJ got the idea of the GUI from Xerox and Bill Gates got the idea of copying from them. Microsoft has been “Xeroxing” Apple’s ideas from day one.
Like jobs he built an environment where a lot of people built their ideas into products. Not gates directly but AJAX owes its roots to MS. There are plenty others if you aren’t to braindead to look.
Bill Gates showed the world how much money you can make by stifling competition at every opportunity and lying through your teeth about it.
This craps getting as thick as the left/right arguments.
How about low cost easy to use computers to the masses. Look at pre- win95 personal computer sales and then look at post Win95. Those PC helped this internet you are browsing really take off, remember Apple was late to the internet game and shipped IE to join in the party.
Yeah, they played dirty, yeah it was buggy, but you cannot simple marginalize their contributions and pretend they had none when in fact they did. Apple clearly has the next round or two won, the nineties were not Apples finest hour.
Neither person would have achieved what they did without the other. Both had great visions and they competed mightily in the same arena.
Whenever great things happen in society, it is due to two intense individuals competing and trying to bets one another. Jobs and Gates were competitors and drove each other to new heights.
Not buying your take. Nothing that Jobs achieved was dependent in any way upon Gates and Microsoft.
Yes and no. I don’t think the early Mac would have been nearly as successful as it was, had it not had Microsoft Word and Excel available for it. Yes, there were alternatives, but I never really liked them. Microsoft had a great Mac team back then and Word and Excel really were great Mac applications that helped make the original Mac a good business tool.
I was working at an Apple dealer in the mid-80’s, and I distinctly remember setting up many, many personal and business Macs with Word and Excel on them.
So Apple were in no way dependent on Gates loan to Apple of a 150 million dollars and his agreement to continue making word for mac at a time when Apple was virtually bankrupt.
You haven’t a clue what you are talking about and should be embarrassed.
@Mike
Sorry, Mike but that $150million from Microsoft was not a “Gates loan.” That whole 1997 Apple-Microsoft deal had many facets to it.The $150 million from Microsoft was for the purchase of Apple preferred stock – non-voting stock. in addition, there was a cross agreement between MS and Apple regarding intellectual property in which each shared some info with the other AND MS agreed to continue to develop MS Office for the Mac. The $150 million was not to keep Apple’s finances in good shape. Yes, they were financially bad shape but an infusion of $150 million into a multibillion dollar (even at that time) was only a drop in the bucket. What saved Apple was the classic belt-tightening that Steve Jobs did — trimmed expenses, getting rid of excessive products lines, etc. I agree that both Apple and MS “learned’ from each other but your history is fuzzy. Here’s a good article to read http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/4246/
With all respect, let me disagree.
IMHO, in a word without Jobs, Gates would had found someone else to rip off, and Microsoft’s products would be even crappier but still used by the immense majority.
In a word without Gates the GUI would have taken longer (but not much) to reach the masses.
sorry word=world
@Spark
All my appreciation to you my dear American friend ! An Apple fans from Milan – Italy – born in 1950…
Maybe Jobs was afraid he might run out of TP if needed to drop a #2 in the middle of the night!
That comment was uncalled for.
maybe your just an oversensitive shmuck… I personally think that Gates hasn’t done a goddamn bit of actual “good in his entire goddaman weasely life…and I am definitively including the Bill and Melinda Gates FOundation bullshit… Study some history (or pretend you aren’t one of the weasely insiders, if you actually are one) and you will know that foundations are bullshit, top to bottom.
He kept it by his bedside because he hoped it was true that laughter really is the cure.
LOL microsoft will have a difficult time next 3 years as the iPad grows more powerful and lighter.
Borg vs McEnroe
Different personalities but always good stuff.
(Yeah I’m old, so what)
Well put.
Although I’d suggest Connors vs Lendl as more apt. After winning Wimbledon in 1984, the pendulum swung, and Connors never beat Lendl again.
While I too enjoyed the Conner vs Lendl matches…for me the two contrasting personalities of Borg and Mac was the story, not who won or lost.
I have to say, after reading the biography, I came away with more respect for Bill Gates. As strong a personality as Steve was, Bill Gates never allowed himself to be bullied and was immune to the RDF. As much as I respect SJ, I have to give Gates credit there.
Steve and Bill: the Yin and Yang of the personal computing revolution. Guess which guy was the Yang?
I thought you said “Wang” – there would be no need to guess who that guy was.
I thought he said “Wanker”
Both are great. one living and the other in the Glorious Kingdom.
What if there were no Gates…?
It might be that somehow Jobs work would have turned out not quite as well as it did.
Competition does wonderful things for consumers.
Crap goes away FAST.
Cash to by quality goes down.
Capability on all aspects of products go up rapidly.
What if there were no Gates…?
Someone else would have programmed the calculator for the first release of Mac OS.
Otherwise, I consider Microsoft to have been a dire detriment to the computer community. Would that they’d just roll up and at long last die. I used to hold out hope for them, but no more.
Actually the Mac OS calculator was written by Chris Espinosa who still is Apple employee No 8.
The first work that Microsoft did for Apple was Applesoft BASIC which was crappy in comparison to Woz’s integer BASIC. Woz was too busy or too lazy to add floating point arithmetic to his interpreter. Jobs had to go to Microsoft which had a FP BASIC collecting dust on a shelf.
Someone else (Digital Research comes to mind) would have programmed the FP BASIC or perhaps Jobs would have used his reality distortion field on Woz to convince him to get the job done.
Steve Jobs deserves kudos for not ripping Gate’s head off after Microsoft stole, then refused to return, Apple QuickTime source code from a third party Apple developer. Instead we all got to watch Big Brother Bill appear at MacWorld on the big screen treated as a fan and friend of the Mac. Steve Jobs even chided us when we deservedly ‘BOO!’ed Gates-the-crook.
Who was the better man? I know who. 😎
Grammar correction:
…ripping Gates’ head off.
We talking about the same Bill Gates here? Ok, maybe he doesn’t quite deserve a pie in the face, but c’mon…this guy’s company stagnated the personal computer industry for over a decade.
When Jobs said MS had no class and brought no culture to their products, that’s one of the most damning things he could say from his perspective, and also one of the most accurate.
Mellowing out in the later years or not, I refuse to believe these guys were buddies deep down inside. One probably thought the other guy was some book smart, only-in-it-for-the-money idiot, and the other probably thought his counterpart was some arrogant SOB dreamer.
Competition isn’t the only way to make progress. There doesn’t need to be a yin to every yang to make a lasting contribution to society-dreams and dreamers can do that all by themselves.
Now that Steve is gone, there seems to be this upwelling of respect for Gates that I can’t comprehend. “Oh, Gates isn’t so bad after all…I’m sure there was mutual respect between them…” Phooey. Great, he’s no longer running MS and he’s giving millions to charity. Awesome. He’s still responsible for most of the dark ages we’ve been suffering through and only now seem to be coming out of.
When I think of a world of Microsoft, had Apple not been revived by Steve, I think of a very oppressive world where all media, music, video, movies, tv, photos, books, newspapers, seminars and presentations would be converted to buggy, goofy Window media files with DRM that would tax us, punish us and keep us from doing what we need and desire to do. When I think of Microsoft, I think of trying to help my elderly Aunt with her computer, its crapola, unsolicited pop-ups and spam ads, its idiosyncrasies, viruses, hiccups, obscure and confusing interface and file system, and frustrating limitations…when I explain to her there is an easier way, a better, happier world, she cannot conceive of such a happy world, because all she knows, and all her friends know, and all they really care to know, is Microsoft. That is a world that truly frightens me, and I am so very thankful to Steve and the amazing team at Apple, for leading us far away from that scary world that Bill Gates envisioned that almost came to pass.
Thanks, newton*.
Very well put.
+1
(bill Gates wan’t into building the BEST possible. he was into just creating a good enough product, use it’s colossal monopoly position to kill off the competiton and then don’t spend anymore and move on to the next target. The primary difference between Gates and Jobs was Gates was in it for the money and Jobs for the love of great products. Sort of the Businessman vs the Artist )
As long as Bill Gates is a card caring supporter of eugenics, he will never gain my respect. As for his contributions to the technology field, I believe his most used phrase to people who brought him their original ideas was, “So, sue me.” (After his team purloined the product. I have personal experience with this).
I think BIll Gates and Eric Schmidt are scum of the Earth. If you really want to know how I feel, just ask. 😉
Cheers
Cool story…even as a mac fanboy, I have a lot of respect for Gates…RIP Steve
The biography. It sucks. It is about some beast we did not know.
In 1985, I laboured for 3 weeks to get a lotus 123 spreadsheet to print out legibly on a 15 in line flow printer, from a PC. The next year at a different employer, I took a Mac home for the weekend, set up a cash flow forecast and break even analysis for a business I was planning, on Excel, and got it to fit on the page in about 10 minutes. Have been using MS products on Macs ever since. Gradually transferring to numbers, pages etc, but both together have been wonderfully productive tools.
Microsoft “invented” Excel, Powerpoint, and the true windows Word ( not based DOS Word ) on the Mac and made more money for each Mac sold ( ~$200 ) vs PC sold (~$60) in ’86-’88. And MS purchased $150 mil of Apple stock when Jobs returned in ’97 to help keep it alive. I am glad Gates and Jobs were friends at the level they were. [ that’s why the first real Office products for PC were version 6 on Windows95 – the first 5 versions were Mac only ]
PowerPoint was first developed by Forethought for Mac and later bought by M$
SeattleChris:
Would you please refrain from remind us (Mac Folks) of MS Word 6?
Thanks a lot!
Steve jobs became a very bitter man from seeing what bill gates accomplished with the windows operating system, and try to stop it with law suites. When that didn’t work he became even bitter and made it more personal between him and bill. That when he began to criticizes bill’s work. Bill is a classy guy cause he never got personal with jobs or as angry has he did at lease I can say in public as jobs did. what kill jobs the most is the fact that windows has dominated the computing market and not apple is an old war munger who can never win, jobs history off war foes back to IBM, HP, Microsoft, now Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others anyone how get in the way of him selling apple products. Apple will never win because even with the success in mobile market they still have trouble in the desktop market the mobile market isn’t enough to carry them there is still room for lots o competition apple has a large size of the US market for now with tough competition from android and believe it or not windows phone is picking up some ground (3rd) passing RIM. not to mention some i-phone users say they are getting bored of their i-phone and trying out other options and if u look at the market on a global scale apple has a very small share where most buyers go for the cheaper option apple cannot win. Steve jobs will die his third death when Microsoft wins the mobile market. poor Steve jobs will never rest in pease
LOL!
Steve jobs became a very bitter man from seeing what bill gates accomplished with the windows operating system, and try to stop it with law suits. When that didn’t work he became even bitter and personal with his criticism of Bills work. Mr. Bill Gates is a classy guy because he never got personal with Steve jobs or as angry has he did at lease I can say not in public as Steve jobs did, Total classiness of bill Gates when Steve Jobs return to Apple to head the company and launch the I’m a Mac ad campaigns Microsoft and bills Gates got criticize by partnering companies and investors for not going at apple directly. And instead did their add campaign in a lighter tone making no criticism of Apple. What killed Steve jobs the most is the fact that Windows OS has dominated the computing market and not Apple. Steve Jobs is an old war monger who can never win a war, Steve Jobs history off war goes back to IBM, HP, Microsoft, now Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others anyone how gets in the way of him selling apple products. Apple will never win because even with the success in the mobile market they still have trouble in the desktop market the mobile market isn’t enough to carry them. There is still room for lots of competition since the market is young, Apple has a large size of the US market for now with tough competition from Android and believe it or not windows phone is picking up some ground (3rd) passing RIM. Not to mention some i-phone users say they are getting bored of their i-phone and trying out other options and if u look at the market on a global scale apple has a very small share where most buyers go for the cheaper option apple cannot win. Steve jobs will die his third death when Microsoft wins the mobile market. Poor Steve jobs will never rest in peace.
Jexhu
How can anyone take you seriously? You write like an infant.
Whenever you do get your head out of your ass, you will find that the war is over….Apple won. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Well i do realize there was some typo after i posted because i didn’t bother to go over what i typed. However that fluff and puffy face of yours looks like the perfect fit for an ass. you sound like George bush declaring victory for a war unsuccessful and doling out trillions after.