[DM-MUG] When Steve met Bill (Commentary)

[Russ & Marilyn Carlson]

When Steve Met Bill

By Jason Snell (jsnell at macworld.com)

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates shared a stage at the D: All Things Digital  
conference this week. And while their joint-appearance may have been  
disappointing to anyone expecting a two-billionaires-enter-one- 
billionaire-leaves battle of wits, it was a fascinating opportunity  
to view two men who are very much in the public eye, perhaps destined  
to be inextricably linked to one another in the history books,  
interact with each other for the first time in a public setting in a  
decade.
Read our coverage of the Jobs-Gates session

Covering the session for Macworld, what struck me most about Jobs's  
and Gates's interaction with one another was the genuine warmth they  
both felt when nostalgically recalling the early days of the personal  
computer revolution, when Microsoft supplied a version of the BASIC  
programming language for the Apple II and then became one of the  
flagship application developers for the very first Mac. In an  
industry that has trouble remembering what happened last week, these  
men have 30 years of history -- much of it good, believe it or not.

It's easy to portray these two as bitter rivals, and their two  
companies certainly provide contrasting styles and approaches to  
technology that match the personalities of their founders. Jobs  
showed himself to be a very thoughtful, almost philosophical speaker  
at times. Likewise true to form, Gates exposed his unabashed geeky  
love of the nuts and bolts of the engineering behind the technology.  
But both seemed to recognize the strengths of the other.

For me, the most telling statement of the night was from Gates, when  
each man was asked about what he admired about the other. "I'd give a  
lot to have Steve's taste, his intuitive taste, both for people and  
products," said Gates. He told a story about one of those early  
meetings when the original Mac was being developed, in which Gates  
would approach problems from a technical perspective, as "an  
engineering guy." And in contrast, he'd see Steve Jobs make an  
intuitive decision, based on "his sense of people" and how they'd  
respond to using the technology. "And it was magical," Gates  
recalled. "Wow!"

Jobs, hearkening back to Apple's decision not to license the Mac OS  
to other hardware companies, which led to the rise of Microsoft  
Windows, said that he regretted that Apple had too much of a lone- 
wolf mentality in those days. "Because Woz and I started the company  
based on doing the whole banana, we weren't so good at partnering  
with people.... And if Apple had more of that in its DNA, it would've  
served us really well. And [Apple] didn't learn that until a couple  
decades later."

This is not to say that the night was entirely a love-fest, not on  
the same day where Jobs likened the Windows version of iTunes to  
"giving a glass of icewater to somebody in hell." Most notably the  
pair clashed about, of all things, Apple's successful series of  
television ads featuring the Mac Guy (Justin Long) and the PC Guy  
(John Hodgman). Gates was visibly uncomfortable during the entire  
discussion of the ads, not buying Jobs's suggestion that "The art of  
those commercials is not to be mean, but is actually for the guys to  
like each other." When both Jobs and co-moderator Kara Swisher  
expressed that they liked the PC guy, Gates shot back, "His mother  
loves him." And when Jobs carted out his well-worn Alan Kay quote  
about people who make software desiring to design their own hardware,  
Gates let rip with another dry rejoinder: "I can resist that." But  
Gates did admit that, in certain areas, Apple's approach to unified  
hardware and software design was appropriate, which is why Microsoft  
has adopted it for products such as the Zune, Xbox, and the new  
Microsoft Surface table PC product.

However, the pair did find a lot of common ground, especially when  
defending the honor of the technology product that defines both of  
them: the personal computer. While excitedly discussing the future of  
tiny, "post-PC" devices, Jobs and Gates both said that the death of  
the PC is probably a long way off. Gates ticked off other devices  
that were going to kill the PC, like the network computer, and the  
single-function computer. Jobs said that "the PC will continue to be  
with us, and it'll morph with us." But Jobs also showed a greater  
enthusiasm for the possibilities in those new devices, such as the  
iPod and the iPhone.

Ultimately, did this Gates-Jobs joint appearance live up to the  
electricity in the room beforehand? Even though it was a relatively  
gentle kind of evening, I'd have to say yes. To see these two icons  
of the computer industry, reacting to one another and playing off  
each other, in an informal setting free of PR handlers, was a chance  
to peek through their shells a little bit. And what we got was a good  
glimpse at two men who genuinely love technology and are driven by  
their enthusiasm in the work they have chosen.

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