Steve Jobs And Bill Gates: Simon & Schuster's Interview With Biographer Walter Isaacson (VIDEO)

Simon & Schuster, the publisher who recently released "Steve Jobs" Walter Isaacson's biography of the Apple co-founder, sat down with the author to discuss the 30-year "love hate rivalry friendship" between tech titans Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

In the interview, Isaacson calls Gates and Jobs "the two binary stars of the digital age." Both men were college dropouts who went on to found two of the most important companies in the world. But their personalities were wildly different.

Gates and Jobs often butted heads about how they thought tech companies should be run. Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying, "[Bill Gates was] a good business man, but he just had no taste." In the biography Jobs even says that Gates would be a "broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram."

Isaacson goes on to use Microsoft's and Apple's respective MP3 players as an example of how different the men's ideologies were. Jobs' integrated, perfectionist style fathered the iPod, which Isaacson describes as looking like a "little gem." By contrast, says Isaacson, the Microsoft's Zune "looks like it was designed in Uzbekistan."

Towards the end of Jobs' life, Gates paid a visit to the Apple co-founder's Palo Alto home, and the two reminisced for three hours. During that meeting, according to ABC News, the pair were able to share their mutual respect for each other:

"I used to believe that the open, horizontal model would prevail," Gates told Jobs. "But you proved that the integrated, vertical model could also be great."

"Your model worked too," Jobs replied.

At the time, Jobs remarked that Gates was, "happier than I've ever seen him," according to PCMag. This pleasant encounter would be the last time they saw each other.

Watch Isaacson's interview with Simon & Schuster (below).

For more surprising revelations from Steve Jobs biography, check out our slideshow below.

Comments

[Amit Nagpal]

11:53 AM on 10/31/2011

i finished the book last night. i highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this man's story or in history.

[kerriberri]

06:22 PM on 10/30/2011

I've always seriously doubted the explanation of the naming of Apple.

I think he was giving homage to the Beatles, while knowing he was violating their copyright (Apple Records). Ergo, new backstory.

[Lucille]

08:10 AM on 10/29/2011

The Articles stated,

"The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body," Jobs' wife Laurene Powell explained."

"Powell did attempt to talk her husband into the surgery."

"The body exists to serve the spirit," she told Jobs."

Too bad Jobs didn't listen to his wife, yet I don't believe death is the end of our spirits so I hope Steve is having another great adventure.

[jokamachi]

11:45 PM on 10/28/2011

Gates became a philanthropist, Jobs became a paranoid narcissist. That's the difference.

[frank day]

05:03 PM on 10/29/2011

Became? Didn't he kick out his pregnant girlfriend and then refused to pay child support?

Sounds like he was born that way??

[firelord5000]

11:05 PM on 10/29/2011

Yup, the Jobs fanclub pretty much ignores that whole point, or the fact that Bill Gates philanthropy is higher than Jobs entire lifetime worth of fortune.

As for acid/ashram, how is that alternative medicine treating you Steve? Oh wait, too soon?

[molare88]

05:44 PM on 10/30/2011

wow that was tasteless

[GirlInNYC]

11:21 PM on 10/28/2011

So it wasn't just Biggie and Tupac.

[NerdyStudent]

04:10 PM on 10/28/2011

Could you possibly imagine the fanboys being that nice to each other? I mean, without making some kind of a blood-oath (alliance) to destroy Android/Google...

Nope.

[drumz]

03:52 PM on 10/28/2011

Too bad both of them felt the need to ship our jobs and production to countries for cheap labor - innovative? Not so much.

[theveggiedude]

04:02 PM on 10/28/2011

When Steve and Woz created Apple they insisted their products be made in the USA. And it was through the 80's and early 90's.

Then Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy when Jobs returned in 1997 (he was gone for 12 years). The only way to save Apple was to do what the competition was doing - outsource.

[jokamachi]

11:47 PM on 10/28/2011

Should have folded then. Set a horrible standard.

[KarateKid]

04:19 PM on 10/28/2011

And, not just those two, how about the ENTIRE industry?