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Bill Gates Opens Up About Steve Jobs
Nerval's Lobster writes "Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates displayed a bit of emotion when talking to CBS's 60 Minutes about Steve Jobs. The interview didn't focus entirely on the relationship between the two men, with most of its running time devoted instead to Gates's charitable efforts. But when the conversation shifted to their last meeting before Jobs's death from cancer in 2011, Gates—normally so cerebral—seemed a bit sad. 'When he was sick I got to go down and spend time with him,' Gates said, describing their meeting as 'forward looking.' Jobs spent a portion of their time together showing off designs for his yacht, which he would never see completed—something that Gates defended when the interviewer seemed a little bit incredulous. 'Thinking about your potential mortality isn't very constructive,' he said. Gates also praised Steve Jobs's marketing and design skills: 'He understood, he had an intuitive sense for marketing that was amazing.' In contrast to his subtle—and not so subtle—digs at the iPad over the years, Gates conceded that Apple had 'put the pieces together in a way that succeeded' with regard to tablets. Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO."
insert Bill Gates slam here
insert Steve Jobs supreme being statement here
*phew* day saved.
Sent from my AT&T iPad
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Microsoft Yacht(tm).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
We hear and see stories about bitter company rivals. However at the same time they are also partners.
For the most part it is business it isn't personal.
In areas where they are competing in the same spot, they will be quite bitter rivals, however if a different product supports the other company they will be best friends.
Microsoft Fought OS's while partnered in Office.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Thinking about your mortality is possibly the MOST constructive thing you can do, at least as far as not being an a-hole is concerned.
'Thinking about your potential mortality isn't very constructive,
That is bullshit, and he knows it. Wasting your last months on earth worrying about a design for a mega yacht somehow is constructive? I guess rich people really aren't like me. They don't seem to actually have a soul.
...on Slashdot then?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Whatever said and done in public, these college drop outs, they are a thick bunch. They stand up for one another.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You never talk bad (in public) about a rival who is dead. It's poor form.
Had Jobs still been alive, things would be different.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life:
Yeah, Gates being alive and Jobs being dead, mainly.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yes, it's a shame a vindictive billionaire, who disavowed his daughter for nearly 20 years, didn't get to see his yacht finished before he died.
I've long been fascinated by the evolution of Bill Gates. I cut my teeth in this field as an engineer at Netscape, where I watched along with the rest of the industry as Microsoft did what they did to Netscape and all of the following legal proceedings and DoJ activities ensued. While I still respected the story and beginning of Gates (reading everything I could about him, when I was a teenager), I hated Mr. Borg with a passion and everything about Microsoft. It was what drove me to the arms of Linux and, ultimately, Unix (and my career therein).
Then, he decided to move on from just leading a tech and business army and raking in cash to making finding a way to properly use that cash for the betterment of man. We saw a completely different side of him. Perhaps a new side of the guy that game with maturity and wisdom. I gained a completely new respect for him. I still disagree with some of his views, completely disagree with some of his former business practices, am frustrated and dismayed with a lot of Microsoft's current endeavors and decisions . . . but as a man -- I've come to have a lot of admiration for what he's doing. He's a great example for the rest of the world's wealthiest in doing something truly constructive and beneficial with their unimaginable wealth.
Americans love a success story and we love a story of personal redemption. The only thing we love more than hating someone is them turning things around and giving us reasons to be in their corner. This is one of those stories. And, personally, I find his activities a solid reminder in my own personal life to remember how fortunate I am in my career. As a direct result, I make a point of doing what I can to support things like Engineers Without Borders. I bet many other engineers out there have found the same respect and inspiration.
I also find it sad that, for as inspiring as I found Jobs as far as business and design, there is simply no similar compelling feeling in that same way, after his passing.
I found a picture of Bill as he's discussing his friendship with Steve Jobs.
To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing.
Jobs' charity efforts?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Now, a weeping clown.
The more Bill Gates interviews I read, the more assured I am that he really is tired of the tech industry. He won't be a Wozniak-type of guy who will critically observe MS or other companies, judge platforms or review products. He endorses coding, talks about future technologies in broad terms, but he must be really pressed by reporters to share anything relevant to current affairs. He couldn't care less.
Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO.
Well... there's not much of a reason to rip a rival limb from limb when he's already dead. It'd be in pretty poor taste, actually, and I'd expect Gates to avoid badmouthing Jobs if only to avoid looking like an asshole.
Also, their relationship was reportedly far less adversarial than people tended to assume. Most of the people who were supposedly in-the-know claimed that they were friends to some extent, and got along pretty well in spite of disagreeing on a lot of things.
I never use an MS product aside from the XBox by choice, and I use OSX daily, but I think Bill Gates is a legitimately OK dude. I think if he made a return to MS, he could really turn things around for them, particularly with the lessons that Apple has taught the industry.
Also, it occurs me that such an obviously massive geek could be the antidote to the ultra-consumer tech. industry.
Do you see what I did there?
By all means, please DO NOT link us to http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n .
May not work on an iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n
witold.org
Many years ago, I once spent a Saturday trying to make the Catalan solids out of wood, using cheap tilt vises, a homemade rotary table, and a poor man's milling machine (an end mill in a cheap drill press that couldn't hold it steady). Didn't get very far-- the tools simply didn't have the precision needed to do a good job. Even though we economized too much on the tools, they were still ridiculously expensive. Why did I try that way? I was following my father's vision of how such a thing should be done, and machinery was what he grew up with. Another Saturday, I used a different approach of making a paper model and filling the interior with epoxy. This worked much better but still had problems. For one, epoxy has a shelf life. It will not harden properly if it is too old, and this was. Another is that epoxy generates heat when it is curing, and this was a large enough mass to become almost too hot to touch. I don't know if an even larger mass could get hot enough to cause real problems such as fires and melting, but it was something to keep in mind. Then my father wanted to employ number punches to number the sides, as if hardened epoxy was just as malleable as metal. To satisfy him, I tried it, and of course the epoxy shattered. Today, those shapes would be a trivial job for a 3D printer.
The point? If I had spent those Saturdays playing computer games, no one would have thought anything of it. But when I mentioned this use of a Saturday, I got a lot of strange looks, and a few queries about why I had "wasted" my time so. My brother warned his fiancee, who dislikes nerds, that I was likely to show off those polyhedrons. It was almost as if I had contracted a contagious disease, the way people acted about the whole thing. Nice when your own brother inoculates his circle against your weirdness, so that they all know to keep their distance and not give you any opportunities to bore the hell out of them and show off how nerdy you really are.
You don't know what specifically Jobs and Gates were discussing about yachts. If it was ways of fitting the ship for cleanup of oil spills, plastics, or other pollution, or for some sort of science like ocean or hydrothermal vent research, or as a test bed for Internet communication over vast expanses of empty ocean (think how that could benefit the Pirate Bay), I would not call that a waste of time. And even if it was none of that, it likely was something of some use. I hardly think Jobs and Gates would have discussed the sort of crass, trashy thing a moronic joker like Donald Trump would do, such as solid gold plumbing fixtures which serves no good purpose, as it is only to inspire jealousy by rubbing in how incredibly filthy rich the owner is, and that only works on fellow fools.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I had the opportunity to attend an event where he spoke on stage. I have never, ever, been as awed by someone speaking as at that moment.
The man is scary sharp, very focussed and when he singles you out in the crown (and he does if you mess up on the 'open source' terminology) you are in for a lousy few minutes. Not because he dresses you down in public, but because he looks at you directly. Which is quite unnerving to say the least.
He may look like a hobo but his eyes are full of blue fire. As I said, he is truly scary to be around.
And, for the record, I agree with his views on most things.
Everyone spent decades making fun of Michael Jackson, hating him, taking cheap shots at him while his career faded into obscurity occasionally littered with awful chance at giving it another go and so on. But as soon as Jackson dies then suddenly everyone acts like they thought he was mankind's greatest hero, a true legend in the music industry and the great person to have ever lived. Now that he is dead no one ever has a single negative thing to say about him and people will now angrily defend his awesome legacy when just before his death they would laugh right a long with the rest of the world at his pathetic antics.
Why did you have to post this and make me cry again? I haven't cried about Steve Jobs' death since two weeks after it happened.
Sent from my heart
dude, it was only 10 seconds of the interview, at about 10 min in here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n this article summary is longer than the comment
reality. I'm no Apple fan boy, but what is Gates going to rip on Jobs and Apple about? Single-handedly creating the tablet market that MS has been trying--and failing-- to jumpstart for a decade? The steaming pile of fail that is Windows 8? Apple has been kicking butt since 2000 while MS has brought us Zune and Vista.
what jobs said in the end ....
Wow. I completely agree with you. Sorry that some idiots are modding you a "troll" for this statement. If I had any mod points, I'd remedy that. Strangely, I was getting 15 mod points daily until about three weeks ago when I made a comment about getting so many mod points, and suddenly I haven't had any mod points at all since then. My behavior online here hasn't changed at all (frequency of logging in, frequency of posting, frequency of my ;>) smileys and bold-facing...) C'est tres etrange.
.
Did you catch the point once where Grandma Bush of the presidential dynasty donated $100kUSA to a Texas school system with the money earmarked for software purchases from one of her grand-children's software company? Isn't that a hell-of-a-sneaky way to "gift" money to your grandchildren and sneak around the IRS tax-free gift limit of $11kUSA per year? ? ? If it weren't such a fucked up sleazy thing to do and immoral at that, I guess I'd be impressed by it. I always thought that Barbara Bush was one of the "good ones", along with her husband in some ways, but that certainly changed my mind about her.
That would have been idiotic, if it were true. However there is no Java in Mozilla Firefox or Seamonkey.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Cue John Cleese...
"Look out, there are llamas!"
Early Python sketch...
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
The Gates' Enemy is Down
Only people who have created and achieved something life, who generated wealth and donated most to charity know the value of friendship and the art of giving.
Whether you approve or disapprove is not changing any thing to late Jobs or Bill Gates. The turning point in life comes at some age or after some major events that transforms the person. Jobs did not give to charity does not matter because his plan was not known to us. What is the story here is some persons who was successful financially finds a cause to spend his fortune and another uses his vision and creativity to produce products used by millions. All other discussions are pointless.
...business hostilities are often for show. A huge number of big-corp CEOs are well acquainted with each other or friends, even if their companies fight bitter battles.
In a position like that, you learn to make a difference between the personal and the business. When I rose to a position where I was dealing with the C-Levels directly years ago, I quickly found out that behind closed doors you would regularily get statements like "I'd personally like to do that, but (corporate politics or business reason) I can't." - and sometimes the talk would end there and sometimes it would go into finding a way to get it done. I've been to court with business opponents and shared a ride and a nice conversation with them to the courthouse.
Never confuse the personal relations of two people with the business relations of their companies.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Bill Gates opens up Steve Jobs. "Yup, still dead."
I love how these two were rivals of legendary proportions and yet they clearly had some form of friendship that survived all those years of fighting. Its like the legendary cutscene from halo where sgt johnson and an elite stop fighting and hug before the ring blows up. I *just* realized how nerdy that sounded.
Bill is a relic from ancient times
An ancient species with highly dualistic traits.
He's an entrepeneur
AND a human being!
Remarkable, really.
You see even superhuman CEOs have a human side to them after all. Too bad that he didn't say this mushy stuff to Jobs when he was still alive. Now Gates probably regrets all the mean things he to Jobs....nah!!