Saturday, October 29, 2011

When Bill Met Steve

1985: The young and the restless. Gates and Jobs, photographed at Tavern on the Green in New York City


Jobs was furious. . . . . "Get Gates down here immediately," he ordered Mike Boich, who was Apple's evangelist to other software companies. Gates came down -- alone and willing to discuss things with Jobs. "He called me down to get pissed off at me," Gates recalled. "I went down to Cupertino. . . . . I told him, 'we're doing Windows.'. . . . . 'we're betting our company on graphics interface'."

Their meeting was in Jobs's conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him. Jobs didn't disappoint his troops. "You're ripping us off!" he shouted. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!" Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."


Excerpt from Walter Isaacson's new book, Steve Jobs, released last month. All taken from and read more here.

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