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May 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Bill + Steve: The love that dare not speak its name
Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Gates and Jobs. Great comedy acts often work in pairs. That's how it was at this week's All Things D conference, aka Walt Mossberg's Geek Fest in the West, as the leaders of Apple and Microsoft shared a stage together for the first time in 10 years. (You can find the video here.)
Papa Bear Mossberg and Kara “Don't call me Baba Wawa” Swisher prodded the pair as Jobs jabbed and Gates grinned uncomfortably. The highlight? St. Stephen revealing that he and Sir Bill have been secretly married for 10 years. (And no, I am not joking, though one hopes Jobs was.) One can only imagine the fights over who gets to be on top.
This historic reunion took place after Jobs had told Mossberg that selling iTunes for Windows “is like offering a glass of icewater to people in hell.” No wonder Bill was grinding his teeth.
Other notables to assume the hot seat include top Jedi George Lucas, AOL survivor Steve Case, Cisco's John Chambers, YouTube's Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, CBS honcho Les Moonves, and some third-tier presidential hopeful named McCain.
I understand conference organizers were forced to rent an aircraft hangar to accommodate all the egos.
If I threw a conference named All Things C, would anybody come? Post your comments below or email them to me here. I promise not to leave you alone with scary Uncle Walt.
Posted by Robert X. Cringely on May 31, 2007 07:52 AM
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I remember the pair of them... starting in 1982 when APPLE was working on the LISA (MAC's predecessor)
Ugly fights about whether Microsoft stole the MOUSE and windows from APPLE, or whether APPLE in fact stole the mouse from Xerox PARC research center!!
There's no real debate over who "stole" what from whom, despite "ugly fights," which were the result of egos, not facts. Both Apple and Microsoft "stole" the mouse and gui (not windows) from Xerox PARC, although Apple used the gui commercially first.
Both the mouse and gui were invented at PARC, but neither were patented, thus free for anyone's use. That wasn't PARC's intent, but the result of lack of foresight and negligence.
Posted by: KB at June 1, 2007 06:24 AMLet's don't forget that the Mac owes much of its success to Microsoft. Until Word and Excel hit the market, the Mac was mostly an expensive toy. Yes, desk-top publishing was important, but Word and Excel gave businesses and average users a reason to buy Mac. So it makes sense that Jobs thinks kindly of Gates.
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