Gates & Jobs, Together Again

(CBS)  For the first time since 1983, Microsoft co-founder and Apple co-founder Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were together on the same stage at the same time.

Some people expected fireworks at this historic meeting which took place Wednesday night at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital Conference in Carlsbad, California, but it was more of a love fest.

Responding to questions from conference co-hosts Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher, the two tech pioneers showed that they have more in common than many people might have thought. And, like the Mac and PC characters in those ubiquitous Apple commercials, there was a certain amount of affection between the two of them.

One thing many people don't realize is that in addition to being competitors, Gates and Jobs have collaborated since the early days of both their companies and continue to collaborate on making Microsoft Office one of the most popular applications for the Macintosh.

Microsoft was involved in the early development of the Mac, making the first graphical word processing program and spreadsheet to run on any computer and even before that, Microsoft provided a version of its BASIC programming language for the Apple II.

Both men acknowledged working together on the Mac was a big risk. Gates: "We really bet our future on the Macintosh being successful. So we were working together." It was the Mac where Microsoft first introduced software that took advantage of a graphical user interface. Later Microsoft introduced Office for Windows - after it had proved itself on the Macintosh platform.

Much later, the two men had the opportunity to work together again. In 1985 Steve Jobs was fired from Apple by then-president John Scully, who Jobs had recruited. Apple fell into disarray during the 1990s with uninspired products and no apparent direction.

Gates recalled that in 1997 he was in discussions with then Apple President Gil Amelio "to get things moving." But "then one day, Steve called me and said, 'Don't worry about those Amelio negotiations anymore.'"

That was when Jobs re-took control of Apple¸returning as CEO after Apple bought NeXT, a company that Jobs founded shortly after leaving Apple. Later that year, it was announced that Microsoft would make a financial investment in Apple and beef up its Macintosh Office products. Jobs reiterated that "the developer relationship between Microsoft and Apple is one of the best we have."

Both leaders acknowledged that they are both in the software business. For Microsoft that's obvious, but Jobs also considers Apple to be a software company, even though it's best known for hardware products. He characterized both the Mac and the iPod are "beautiful software wrapped in a beautiful box."

Both men acknowledged one difference between the companies in that Apple makes both the operating system and software for its computers while Microsoft licenses its operating system to PC hardware vendors.

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[time2toss]

One more point: The Personal Computer has developed its own gravity with its mass of decades of success.

Jobs & Gates have and will continue to come out with more toys, but even they cannot deny the bread & butter is in the Personal Computer, particularly with Windows.

Don't sweat it, users. PC's will be around for a long time to come, however the biggest change may be how you interact with them (may move away from the keyboard eventually)

[time2toss]

I would have given anything to see Gates come out dressed like the "I'm a PC" dude, overstuffed like he was with useless demo software.

No matter what, Apple will always be a niche computer unless they open up software development as has been the case with the PC.

People value choices, bargains, and generally complete freedom to pick & choose their applications. THAT right there is at the core of what made Windows successful.

Conversely, the one thing that no computer user wants to hear is "you can't run that on your machine", which is at the core of the apple's lesser success.

[hypnotoad72]

Both buy each other's company's stock. That's all I know.

Happy Windows PC user here. It works and having been in the industry and followed both platforms for almost two decades, Apple's own adverts are not entirely accurate. If I want a "Mac", any PC with http://www.openbsd.org is a suitable substitute, even if it won't run "OS X" native apps - plenty of substitutes exist. Why else is Apple moving toward iPods, iTV, iPhone, iWaste (google up that term), and iBlank anyway?

I see Apple moving out of the "Mac" platform entirely. It's too niche, even Adobe has culled some of its Mac products to date (such as the Premiere video editing app), and with the "Mac" being nothing more than a PC with TPM chip to ensure their hijacked open source software can't be installed on any old PC, they've put themselves at a dead end. Why spend $2000 for a new Intel-based computer with using Linux or openBSD on the same computer will achieve 99% the same result?

[michellem99-2009]

I have seen the ads the pc and mac ones. They say nothing.I think Microsoft is moving away from the home computer as we know it. I don't like the stuff Bill Gates dreams up. The Vista OS platform,a table computer.My friend saw that on TV. I don't want that junk they come up with.I am 52. Bill Gates needs to stop changing everything just cos it looks cool. I have waited years to have a computer I can use. Vista looks cool but that just it. I hope Microsoft will think of us who are older users,I am legally blind and I enjoy learning but I am a poor person

[prolegomena]

An allegory for western culture... is it synchretism, or is the dawning of a new age? Maybe both, maybe neither...