In the Company of Friends: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

If founders of two of the staunchest rivals in the computer industry meet, you expect sparks to fly. And if it is Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Steve Jobs (Apple), expectations are even higher. One would expect them to lock their wits, bitch about their products, fight like cats and dogs. It might have happened if Ellison were there - but not with Jobs and Gates. Actually, even organizing a joint interview with Gates and Jobs sharing the same stage is quite a feat. It was made possible in the D5 conference, which is backed by Dow Jones, the owners of Wall Street Journal.

In the beginning of the interview, the high energy and the high tension was almost palpable with Gates and Jobs walking onto the stage with a cordial handshake, among a huge audience full of din due to the audience clapping. The interview started off soon after with the emcees (Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg) asking both Gates and Jobs what each other's contribution was.

Jobs thought that Gates has really built the software revolution with his vision that there could be a software company, a company which decided to survive on writing software in the world where everybody was building their own machines, a company which understood the big picture ('the higher order bit') and capitalized on it. On the other hand Gates, thought that Jobs really envisioned a personal computer, a mass market machine that people would own and use, the GUI! They also attributed their success to the incredible set of people working at their respective companies, without which they could not have built this up, a really humble statement coming from people who are possibly the most successful in the world.

With jibes and wisecracks, discussions about old advertisements ('thousands of people have discovered the Apple computer'), how Microsoft developed software for the Macintosh and is in fact one of the largest software partners of Apple. The story of how Microsoft's Basic was incorporated into Apple (Jobs - 'Let me tell the story'). Woznaik wrote the best basic compiler ever, but never got around do including floating point operations (Jobs - 'These are one of the mysteries of life'). They brokered a deal with Microsoft to supply them with the basic for Apple, and Gates flew down to California with the cassettes.

From the days of yore - 128K memory, the start of the GUI - to the iPhone and the iPod and the Zune replacing the PC as the dominant devices, the cloud and the rich client and how the marriage of the rich client with services on the cloud is the way of the future — they complement and complete each other, it was one long discussion about all things Digital.

However, the best part was when the two stalwarts would reminisce about the past, peek into their pensieve and recall forgotten memories from the times when computers were barely taking shape, of rivalry and partnerships, of how Apple and Microsoft competed but still collaborated, of the past long gone by, and the future yet to come.

What better way to end than Gates' opening line — "I am not fake Steve".

[The complete transcript of the interview is available here, and a highlights video is available here.]