The Rivalry Between Tech Billionaires Bill Gates And Steve Jobs | Business Insider Explains

Although Microsoft and Apple are competitors when it comes to sales and dominating the market, Jobs and Gates have a much more complicated relationship than that. They've worked together in the past. They've traded some harsh words for each other in the media. The essence of Gates's opinion of Jobs is kind of like, you have great ideas, you have great taste, and those are things that Gates said about Jobs a lot, very often. But he did not believe that Jobs had the technical chops to lead a company into the new frontier of technology. I'm Jordan Hart. I'm a trending tech reporter here at Business Insider, and today we're going to be spilling the tea about one of the biggest rivalries in the tech industry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Apple and Microsoft were both founded in the 1970s. Back then, personal computing was just emerging. People were trying new stuff, innovating things. Already at this computerized secretarial service, one secretary can handle what six did before. Warehouses don't need warehousemen. It's all done by computer. Microsoft and Apple were pretty early collaborators. Microsoft made the software for Apple's Apple II PC, but their relationship wasn't perfect by any means. One indicator that it may not go so well is a 1980s trip that Jobs took to convince Microsoft to create software for Macintosh. Jobs's sale pitch did not go over well with Gates, who kind of saw him as more as a salesman than like a real tech leader. They butted heads and they disagreed on the way their company should run and the way the tech industry should move forward. Our goal, and we think what serves the customer best, is to constantly be working on making things better. We're working on the next iPhone. We're working on the one after that. We're thinking about the one after that. As a lot of tech relationships between companies and CEOs work, I mean, you kind of need that rivalry and that competitor who's kind of neck and neck with you to innovate and create the next thing. We love the competition. People see that someone else has done a good job and we can surprise them by showing that we can match and go beyond. For the first few years of working on Macintosh, Apple and Microsoft were very involved. Gates even said that he had more men working on the Macintosh than Apple did. So there was a partnership there. There was a level of working together, creative ideas flowing, and the pair had a lot of respect for each other. The release of Windows in 1985 marked the end of the good vibes between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs felt like Gates and Co. were ripping off Apple's idea of the graphical user interface. Meanwhile, Gates felt like they both took the idea from Xerox, who they both admired as a company. Jobs felt like Gates had no shame in just completely copying Gates's idea. And Gates felt like Apple didn't own one idea. If you ask me, Microsoft and Bill Gates did not rip off Steve Jobs and Apple. I mean, at this time, there was a lot of innovation, a lot of ideas floating around. Everyone was kind of trying to figure out how they could come up with the next big thing that consumers would love. So Microsoft was just doing what any other tech company would do, and Apple doesn't really own the idea of graphical user interfaces. At this point, the rivalry was full-blown. Microsoft and Apple were both in the personal computing space. Gates had a lot to say about Jobs's place in the tech industry. He praised his charisma, his taste, and his ability to command an audience, but ultimately felt like Jobs lacked the technical ability that it took for a tech leader. Jobs felt like Gates was a little bit If you ask me, they both had a winning formula. They just had different ingredients. Back in the 1990s, Microsoft was king of personal computing, thanks to its unique Windows interface, which was revolutionary. They were also the most valuable company in the world. And while Microsoft was at the top of its game in the 90s, Apple needed $150 million investment from Microsoft to help it stay afloat. Apple was also dealing with a lot of turmoil at the executive level during that time. Steve Jobs had left the company and returned in the 1990s, staged a coup to become the CEO again. So there was a lot of moving pieces there, and that investment from Microsoft saved the company, or at least helped it not go under. Microsoft's investment in Apple isn't necessarily an indicator that Jobs and Gates were on great terms. There's a lot of competitors out there, but we think we have a much, much better product. So we'll see if people agree with us. In the early 2000s, Gates made it clear that he felt that the closed-off philosophy and ecosystem of Apple products would make it hard for people to commit to them without Steve Jobs being there to be the salesman that Gates knew he was. Gates isn't 100% wrong here. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world right now, but its last few earnings reports indicate that things are starting to slip there, and they need some innovation if they want to kick it up a notch and be that dominant force that they were when the iPhone first came out. Steve Jobs unfortunately passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2011. But four years before that, Jobs and Gates joined each other on stage at a conference, and the tone was a lot more appreciative and admirable than they'd been in years, and it seemed like the pair had really put the past behind them and were able to compliment each other for their hard work and where their careers ended up taking them. Gates and Jobs might have let bygones be bygones, but their companies are still very much in competition with each other. They're both worth over $3 trillion, and they're racing for their $4 trillion valuation. It's not just each other vying for that top spot, but the startup that started yesterday that's gotten, you know, over a million views on Kickstarter. So there's definitely a lot more tension between Apple and Microsoft with the companies that have yet to even come to fruition yet who want that iPhone moment or that PC moment to catapult them into the stratosphere like it did for Microsoft and Apple. Maybe there's another Steve Jobs and Bill Gates rivalry brewing.