Before he died, Steve Jobs kept a letter from Bill Gates by his bed - Page 3

I don't recall saying anything about Word at all. In fact, I DO recall saying something about him doing some good while at Microsoft.

I believe the phrase you are looking for in both cases is 'human being'

no one is perfect. We all have moments of being awesome people and moments of being raging asshats. Even Gates. Even Jobs when he was alive

In my original post I did not elaborate much but your reply is just too condescending to leave unaddressed.

First Tallest's statement that Gates lied about acquiring DOS is completely revisionist history. Gates sent IBM reps to both Gary Kildall and Tim Paterson but neither deal worked out until Gates purchased DOS for $50K. Later he paid even more money as a bonus without even needing to.

There were no lies. But in the case of Jobs, lying to your business partner about the work that Woz did all by himself, was only worth $500 when Jobs actually collected $5,000 and pocketed the difference by deception is really low. Then to deprive his own child of financial support by saying he was not the father because he was sterile is about as low as one can go. Those are despicable lies not just white lies.

So your comparison of it being like stealing a pie just demonstrates your total lack of knowledge as well as ethics. Your remarks seem to be an attempt to dismiss a very serious character flaw in a very public figure not to mention that many of us loyal Mac fans feel that he has lied to us repeatedly. For example IE was not the best browser for the Mac although he claimed it was. There are many more examples which I will leave to another post.

For the record I am not making Gates to be a saint. He did lie to Ross Perot in 1979 when he told him that every elevator in town was running DOS, That was an absolute lie.

Neither of these guys were Boy Scouts. They were shrewd, brilliant businessmen with different (and in most cases complimentary) visions of computing. They are really the yin and the yang. One could not have been sucessful without the other. As much as I've always detested Gates, for his business tactics, I admire his philanthropy. Jobs single-minded focus on perfection rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but he certainly cared about end users and showed drove Apple to build insanely great products...

Hypocrite much? So people should be banned for saying apple copied xerox but praised for saying microsoft copied apple?

What reason would Steve have to not feel great about the company he had built? If that's the most amicable thing that Bill had to say in this letter to Steve, then who gives a hoot? Stupid article, in my opinion.

Not actually calling for praise. However, since you want to go there, this is an Apple-centric discussion board, and the "Apple just copied Xerox" canard has been one of those smug, sniggering little "Apple sux, losers" internet gems that's been getting traded around since way back in the original Mac OS days. Pretty much on par with "Macs are toys" and "Apple only sells to style conscious posers."

Since, as I say, this is an Apple-centric board, and since you can get absolutely giant heaping helpings of every Apple bashing myth, cliché, distortion, random bullshit, and general ass-hattery on pretty much every other tech site on the fucking internet, I don't think it's particularly outlandish to ask that this particular site maintain at least minimal standards of giving it a fucking rest already.

You don't like people saying mean things about Microsoft? Might I suggest Gizmodo, Engadget, Electronista, ZDNet, or the comments on any given tech review from any given online publication.

Where did you get the information about how much stock Xerox bought and how much they made? To my knowledge this information has alway been confidential and was never disclosed. Not that the scenario isn't plausible.

I don't think Apple could have been accused of stealing the look and feel of the Xerox Star. The computer they saw in action at PARC was the Alto. The Star was still a couple of years off.

I hate it when people quote the dictionary as though to do so were something profound. Here's a quote from the dictionary:

strange |strānj|
adjective
1 unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.

Gates' use of the word is absolutely apt.

What's also strange is how little the judgments for/against Apple/MS/SJ/BG matter.

Life keeps going on, contraindications and all.

"Apocryphal" = made up; fictitious.
I agree, sounds too much aimed to show Bill Gates in a good light, with the story told by himself!!!!

The amount of stock bought by Xerox is widely documented. How much they made is a matter of speculation, ASAIK. The speculation is based on reasonable rationalization - Xerox is reported to have sold the stock some time soon after Apple's IPO. Based on the IPO price, many pundits have assumed that Xerox sold at ~$17/share. But, as I said, this is at best a reasonable speculation because I don't think anyone has found an official record of when the sale took place.

Why couldn't Apple have been accused of stealing the look and feel of the Star? The Star was introduced in 1981, 3 years before the Mac. The lawsuit was for copyright infringement, and specifically named both computers.

Why would Gates fabricate something about what Laurene Powell told him?

Do me a favor. Shut the f*ck up and don't quote me again. You are now the first person on my ignore list. You bring nothing to any discussion even on the pro-Apple-always side. You're an annoying rodent of a man who really needs to work on his anger issues.

Again. Shut the f*ck up.

Chill, dude. You add a reasonable, centrist voice here. Losing your cool will dampen your contributions.

I like that, although I don't think millions have truly been inspired to make a difference by Jobs. Admiring his body of work is not going make that many people get off their butts to do things differently.

Also, there are many, many people inspired by what Gates is doing, and are taking steps to support and emulate. We know that he has inspired a few dozen billionaires to commit billions to charity that they previously had not.

Still, your way of presenting it is kinda cool.


Eradicating polio and malaria will have a smaller impact than iPads and iPhones? Sorry, dude, I cannot fathom the logic.

I think the bottom line is that Gates and Jobs had a strong mutual respect and disrespect for each other.

Jobs was a genius who has truly left his mark on the world. But then so is Gates.

It's all very well accusing Gates of plagiarism, but wasn't it Jobs who said good artists copy, great artists steal? If anyone was guilt of theft, perhaps Jobs visit to Xerox park in the early days can be classified as that?

If we really want to compare Apple and Microsoft, then does anyone remember System 7? it was cool. It really set the bar. But it also crashed frequently and Apple's hardware wasn't as reliable as it has now become. The real problem with Apple back then, however, was price. A decent machine set you back around $3,000. It was priced way beyond the reach of most people, certainly in Europe.

Windows 95 was not as elegant or intuitive to use as System 7, but what it did was to democratise computing. Anyone could use a computer and the price of entry fell by 50%. My first computer was a Windows machine not a Mac, simply because of price.

Gates made the power of the PC accessible and relevant to ordinary people. That was a hell of an achievement.

Personally, I would like to see Gates return to computing and do something equally new and revolutionary. Whatever he does, it won't detract from Steve Jobs' amazing vision, contribution and the sheer passion of the man. Equally, Both Gates and Jobs are giants of modern computing. We owe them both a massive debt.

Steve will inspire alot of people like doctor/scientist to start his own medicla/biotech company (it could be the next Genentech or Pfizer).

Bill Gates has done more for humanity with his foundation than practically any man alive.

I love Apple stuff but can't help but think looking back on Jobs life that as has been mentioned cheating his best mate, denying paternity tests, stopping the charity stuff with Apple ( which Tim Cook reversed as soon as the last wow wow wow was uttered). Thats all pretty unforgivable stuff.

Jonny Ive was reported about being really hacked off for Jobs taking the credit for his work.

Thats not to mention Apple not wanting to pay taxes on its overseas earnings which means that someone ( joe public ) has to make up the difference.

We all buy Apple gadgets and cheer when the results come out, but with the 45% margins it shows how shafted we all are. And the devices are built in China which affects US employment and the trade balance.

The bottom line is that having a boss like Jobs is bad for the employees health. The best that could be said is about his personal life was that he was a bully and nasty bit of work.

Since he's ignoring me now, I'll address him in the 3rd-person...

If he didn't say stupid things, I wouldn't have to point it out. If that upsets him, then so be it, but these constant posts by him where reality is denied are a bit tedious, and a distraction to have to constantly contradict. It's a bit like dealing with people who deny that evolution is a fact, a necessary waste of time that could better be spent on more meaningful discussion.

I've been a student of this history for a long time, and I've never seen it documented anywhere. Speculated about yes, but not documented. What really made me scratch my head was the numbers you provided. If they bought $1m worth at $10 and sold at $17 then they made $700,000 on the deal, not $16m.

As for the Star vs. the Alto being the subject of the Xerox suit against Apple, I am going to look that up and see what I can find. I thought the Alto had to be the prime suspect because that's the computer the Apple team saw when they visited PARC in 1979, and the Mac project was already underway at Apple at that point. So I don't honestly know, but the argument for Apple "ripping off Xerox" is always made in the context of the 1979 visit to PARC.

In any event, you have to be careful about what you read on the 'net about this history. A lot of it is the repeating of hearsay.

For the record, the Gates Foundation is providing a lot of monetary support for the polio eradication program these days, for which everyone is suitably grateful, but he did not start it by any means. It was begun during the 1980s by Rotary International. The members of Rotary clubs around the world have donated hundreds of millions to the program and countless thousands of volunteer hours to immunization programs. They are the ones who are going to places like India, Pakistan and Nigeria and putting those drops into kids' mouths. Just so we know, these things don't happen just because one rich guy parachutes in a bunch of money.

Just a slight correction...

The Lisa project was underway at that point and the Lisa team was already working with a graphical user interface.

I couldn't agree more. But you're being presumptuous on two counts (a) the internet is the only resource and (b) if you don't know something, it is likely to be wrong.


Good point. As an ardent student of Apple history, you would know about the stock split between the time of this transaction and the Apple IPO? Yup, indeed there was such a split accounting for the numbers I cited (and did not just "read from the 'net).


I agree that is the usual context but I don't really concern myself with the usual context. To be honest, it is possible that the Alto was also mentioned in the suit. I simply don't recall one way or the other. But I do recall the Xerox lawyers referring to the Star. Here's a consideration if you strongly believe the Alto was the subject of Xerox's ire. Can a company sue another for copyright infringement of something that was not publicly released? I am not sure about that, one way or the other.

For the record, I did not say BMGF started this effort or that it should take the only credit. Just so you know, I could point out that (a) the Rotary Club did not start the polio eradication movement and (b) their members are not the only ones visiting the afflicted regions of the world; however, I do not see the value of parsing another person's remarks if they are essentially rational and accurate on their own. But for the record, that's just me.

Yes, but they were not the team that visited PARC.

For the record, you gave him credit for eradicating polio. Nobody else was mentioned.

Also for the record, the program the Gates Foundation is supporting is the Polio Plus program started by Rotary International in 1985. In fact the first monies the Gates Foundation provided towards this program was in the form of a challenge grant to Rotary International and was matched by a lot of not-rich people around the world.

I know that very few people outside of the area where this work is being done even know of Rotary International's role in polio eradication, but those who do know understand that this is where the leadership has come from. Gates knows this, which is why he is supporting Polio Plus. For the record.

Which team? The one with Atkinson? Atkinson was working on the Lisa and he went to PARC. Jobs was working on the Lisa (VP) and he went to PARC. Jobs didn't move over to the Macintosh team until much later.

[... and, no, Raskin didn't bring Atkinson into Apple to work on the Mac in 1979 as Hertzfeld said. Atkinson was already working on the Lisa in late '78 and actually introduced Raskin to Burrell who was working in another area of Apple.]

Such vitriol in this thread, over what happened 30 years ago. Why can't we let bygones be bygones, as Bill and Steve did?

When polio is eradicated, Gates will deserve credit. It made sense to specifically mention Gates because the context here is Gates v. Jobs. If you want to reach far enough to extrapolate that to mean no one else deserves credit, then pat yourself on the back



Let me help you just a bit:

"those who do know understand that this is where the leadership has come from - the Rotary Club amongst others". You do know who the others are, right? In neglecting to mention other organizations, you're committing the same sin you accuse me of. But since I never thought it was a sin, I forgive you, dude.

And for the record, the Rotary Club is NOT the frontline organization in polio eradication. You are somewhat misrepresenting the facts. But again, I don't take pleasure in parsing details when someone generally shows interest in facts (which you do), even if they are annoying in trying in vain to contradict me.

Vitriol is a bit strong? According to Isaacson, Steve never "let bygones be bygones". You're not suggesting the bio is wrong on this count too!?

I didn't suggest any Raskin connection to Atkinson. You are right it was a couple years later when Steve took over the Mac team from Raskin, in 1981. Before that he'd been an enemy of the Mac project if only because he was the leader of the Lisa project until he was relieved of that duty. Steve reportedly told Raskin that the Mac was "the stupidest idea he'd ever seen," or something along those lines.

As far as the PARC visit was concerned, Raskin's version of these events was that he arranged it as a way of getting Steve on his side. Raskin certainly had connections with PARC, having worked there at one time himself -- but some people say that his version of events is suspect. He did like to claim credit for things in an often untactful way, but that was just Jef Raskin from everything I've heard, and his grievance might have been totally legitimate. Seems pretty clear he was messed over badly by Steve.

I actually met Jef Raskin once, on the floor of MacWorld SF many years ago when I was a freelancing tech journalist. When I saw the name on the badge I practically jumped out of my shoes. I don't think anyone around knew who he was, but I did. So I spent some time talking with him. The first thing he said when I introduced myself I will never forget: "Welcome to my Expo!"

That was pure Jef Raskin.

You are trying to paper over your lack of knowledge of this topic with sarcasm. It is not working. I am completely done trying to educate you on it.

Now there's the old reliable method of retreating with head up (but looking in another direction). Of course, you know damn well I'm right on all counts.

Laurene Powell said the bio portrayed Steve's relationship with Gates inaccurately. So, no I'm not suggesting that, Ms. Powell is. If you think she is wrong, take it up with her. I for one, believe her story.

And in 100 years we'll all be dead and little of this will matter at all to our descendants - as it really shouldn't matter that much to us right now.

I just enjoyed this report as a rather poignant anecdote about two old acquaintances and competitors, sharing the sure knowledge that one of them was nearing death's door. For another account of rivals whose relationship to each other grew at the end, read David McCullough's biography of John Adams and his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.

I agree, as much as I love Apple, I respect Bill Gates for his innovation and drive. People take your Apple blindfold off and give Bill is respect. Actually Bill did the same thing to Apple, what Apple did to Xerox, improve on a technology that was already out in the public. What if Bill had not given Steve that loan those years ago as non-voting stock and decided to fight the lawsuits for IP infringement, I can say that HIGH probability, there would be NO APPLE today.

I respect Bill and think he given as much to world as Steve, with his previous and present life.

Depends on how you look at the world, approx. 2 Billion people may disagree, since there have no interest in technology, but just want a cure for TB, Malaria, better treatment for other topical diesases and HIV.

Please use some common sense, since Mrs Jobs and stated that this was inaccurate and remember Steve did not have final review on his bio.

Whoops! Sorry. I meant to actually acknowledge that you hadn't brought Raskin into the conversation. That was meant for anyone else that happened to read Andy Hertzfeld's account of how Bill Atkinson came to Apple and I just wanted to stop it there.

My account comes from an interview with Atkinson and Hertzfeld by Grady Booch for the Computer History Museum in 2004. I figure that if you had both of them in the room at the same time corroborating and correcting each other then the info must be fairly solid.