Allies, rivals, partners: How two tech visionaries inspired the digital revolution and changed the lives of billions 'Steve Jobs was a much better marketer than Bill Gates was. But he was not really that technical. He was not a technical code writer. Bill Gates could write code and write good code.
On May 30, 2007, two of America’s most brilliant minds, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, sat down for a joint interview at the All Things Digital Conference.
The two pioneers of the computer world spoke fondly of the other’s contribution to technology.
But what preceded this historic exchange was more than three decades of rocky collaborations and rivalry. Gates and Jobs had battled to dominate a new age and, in the process, revolutionised billions of lives.
“Though they never worked in the same company, they created an industry together, and we have a hippie and a nerd … With Bill, it was always about the money. With Steve … money was nice, but it was never about the money. And so that made them black and white. Up and down. Hot and cold. They were very, very different people,” says journalist Robert Cringely, who worked with Gates and Jobs in the late-1970s.
So what was the rivalry between Jobs and Gates all about?