Jobs vs. Gates: A thirty year warApple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have been trading barbs for years. Here's a look back at one of history's biggest geek rivalries.
Jobs On Gates:
"Microsoft does not want us to succeed, and they are not going to help us." -Steve Jobs, in Computer System News (July 10, 1989)
"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me," he says. "Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful . . . that's what matters to me." -Steve Jobs, comparing his innovation to Gates' in The Wall Street Journal (May 25, 1993)
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste.... I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products." Steve Jobs, appearing on the PBS program "Triumph of the Nerds" (June 1996)
''I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.'' -Steve Jobs in The New York Times (January 12, 1997)
"Our friends in Redmond, they spend over $5 billion in R&D, but these days they just try to copy Google and Apple. So I guess it's a good example of how money isn't everything." - Steve Jobs, speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (August 7, 2006)
Gates On Jobs:
"Steve made it very difficult [for Apple employees] to be part of a team approach that a company of Apple's size really needs to have. I mix those skills somewhat better than Steve.'' - Bill Gates, in The Seattle Times (October 1, 1985)
"If Steve's [NeXT Computer] machine is successful, I will say it will confuse me." - Bill Gates, in Computer System News (November 27, 1989)
''You can always tell whether you're on a Mac or on a PC. Just stick your applications in there and see whether they'll run.'' - Bill Gates, in the San Jose Mercury News
"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run. You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface - like the iPod today - and then lost its position." - Bill Gates, to Reuters (May 12, 2005)
"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." - Bill Gates, in Newsweek (February 1, 2007)
