Slashdot Mirror
Jobs and Gates Chat Amicably
circletimessquare writes "As noted, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs met at the D conference yesterday. AllThingsD has video of the entire convivial and historic meeting — check the highlights clip. When a reporter asked if their rivalry was overblown, Jobs offered up this joke: 'We've kept our marriage secret for over a decade' — to an apparently flummoxed Gates. Other tidbits: 'His mother loves him!' said Gates about PC Guy in the famous series of commercials. 'And we love them because they're all customers!' said Jobs about Microsoft employees working on Zune who use the iPod. Read more about the event, which also covered a lot of serious ground, such as Apple's iPhone, at CNN and the Times Online."
Lesson: sputtering halfwitted rage is for idiot fanboys. The people who actually make things base their self-esteem on what they accomplish, not on how insanely they hate someone else.
The fanbois might wish they did but they don't. MS actually has actually helped Apple more than once. They even gave them a much needed cash infusion at one point in the 90's. And back in 83, at a meeting of my local apple users group, there was a MS shill talking up the apple and the software ms was making for it. Any bad blood is more between the basement dwellers of the world than these two. They have both contributed to the other being very rich. There are other examples, but the apple/ms rivalry is more of a media/fanboi concoction
I saw a news video online with Bill Gates regarding that new touch table thingy last night.
During the interview, he laid his credit card down on the table. It got me to thinking, what kind of credit limit do you think Bill Gates' credit cards have? (Now I know the obvious answer is that he could buy the credit card company).
The interviewer asked him how he tipped, and Gates' response was "I like to meet expectations..."
I'm only halfway joking here. Computerized information systems are the wet dreams of the secret police. The classic problem in intel is that data is gathered at a rate far greater than it can be classified, organized, and analyzed. That's why we'll hear about things like "We had the intel pinning him to the premeditated crime three days before he did it....but we only found out two weeks after it went down." Computers are just like guns, dangerous depending on who has them. Mod me -1 paranoid.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The interview is not as fanboy biased as the /. summary implies. Watching the entire interview is worth it, and entertaining, and you'll be able to see why these two are still such great leaders.
Better in what sense? Better in the sense that you couldn't fit most movies on 1 tape, so you had to switch tapes halfway through, or better in the sense that there was only one manufacturer of the devices to play the tapes, so you had to pay more for them. Or better in the sense that the people in control of the technology tried to control which types of films got distributed using that technology.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Do they really dislike each other? Really? Maybe they used to, back when business was shaky and they were only multi millionaires. But now? They both won.
Both Apple and MS could go bankrupt tomorrow and Gates/Jobs would still have more money that they could ever spend. It's easy to be magnanimous when you are untouchable.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Great companies always work togethe behind the scenes. They have to. It's a Nash equilibrium in that the greatest results come from doing what's best for them and for the rivals. If two companies destroy each other then a third will come to pick up the market and steal it. But if the two greatest companies work together they can keep a great hold on the market for ever and ever.
All the rivalry is created by fanboys and is probably only a good publicity engine for both companies. Big boys don't act like fanboys.
Doesn't spending your own money also decrease your wealth?
riiiiight, that's why Apple has the "Switch" ads, because they aren't trying to attract Microsoft customers. Good reasoning, sparky.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Credit should only be used if you don't have the cash to pay for something.
Could you please explain why I have a credit card then? I always pay everything at the end of the month.
Credit cards are handy because they are accepted everywhere and debit cards, well, often aren't. Credit Cards also have certain guarantees (Check your contract!). For example: sometimes you get extra warranty on an item you buy. That, plus I like the fact that once a month I get a bill and I can see where I did stupid things again. A 1000$ bill huts much more than 10 smaller 100$ withdrawals with a debit card.
Besides, if you cannot afford something you have two real options:
Option number "3", which is using your credit card for it and pay it off over an undetermined time is foolish and expensive. A credit card is for convenience, not to build up debt. Once you understand that, you're golden.
Oh, and if you talk about those impulse buys of 50" Plasma screens, you should reconsider your buying behavior. You do not buy a 50" Plasma screen on a whim, and that means you do have the time to go to the bank to get a real loan.
". . . isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top."
Definitively:
This has nothing to do with Spindler's "ship with a hole in the bottom" comment. The "ship that leaks from the top" is CEOs and VPs who blab about future products to the detriment of current, shipping products while admonishing the vast majority of employees not to leak product details.
When I joined Apple in 1995, we had to watch a security video. It schooled us about export control, "tailgating" through badged entryways, and not talking about product details with the press, friends, etc. It was silly to expect employees to keep their traps shut while they watched Diesel Spindler yak about upcoming products like the PowerBook 5300 which would have "unprecendented speed and battery life". (It didn't.)
The ship that leaks from the top comment is simply a jibe at the days of Sculley, Spindler, and to a lesser degree, Amelio - braggadocio CEOs who represented the "old way" of doing things at Apple, and who didn't hold themselves to the same standards they expected of their employees.
Sculley used to talk about pie-in-the-sky projects like the Knowledge Navigator, Newton, etc. well ahead of the projects actually, you know, working. Spindler was too stupid not to let stuff slip about future product direction. And Amelio talked up future products and strategies in order to keep the company relevant.
I'm watching the highlights on the Wall Street Journal, and it's interesting how different these two guys are. Gates is a dumpy, middle-aged guy who is slouching in his chair. He starts telling the story about how Apple paid Microsoft for a floating point version of BASIC. Jobs, who sits up straight and appears to be in fairly good shape (particularly since his cancer surgery) has to interrupt him, saying "let me tell the story." Gates is polite and lets Jobs interrupt him. However, suddenly the boring anecdote becomes interesting, since Jobs is just a better storyteller.
In a related note, at time index 12:04, Jobs starts talking about the memory capabilities of computers back then, and how different they are today. Same theme as the Mac Plus v AMD Dual Core article today!
On the whole, it's fascinating to see these two giants in the same interview.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.