Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, together on stage

Oldest men in the room chat about old times

31 May 2007 9:29 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Yesterday Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sat down together for a joint appearance at the D: All Things Digital conference.

It was a rare joint appearance by the two most powerful men in the personal computing industry and had been billed as a potentially explosive "versus" confrontation.

In reality it was a civilised sit-down and natter between two men with a 30-year shared history.

The only moment even close to uncomfortable was over the discussion of Apple's current "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" advertising campaign at which point, according to observers, Gates looked awkward and blurted out, about the hapless PC guy, "PC guy’s mother loves him".

Otherwise most of the discussion revolved around the old times, which, considering the almost unfathomable impact these two men have had on the digital industry, was an indulgence that many could argue they are due.

Gates and Jobs reminisced about shared programming languages from the early days and laughed over the spec of those early computer models, which by today's standards do seem laughable.

Some mutual back-slapping was very much in evidence too – Gates on Jobs: "What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal. He has incredible taste and elegance." Jobs on Gates: "If Apple could have had a bit of Microsoft’s knack for partnerships early on, we would have been better for it."

They had a shared voice on the future of personal computing with both men claiming that the PC is not dead, that first the Internet, and now digital media, has revamped the industry. Jobs went one step further to speculate about the "explosion" of what he called "post-PC devices" like the iPod.

We'll leave it to Steve Jobs to have the last word:
"When Bill and I first entered the industry, we were the youngest guys in the room, and now we’re the oldest … And there’s that one line in that Beatles song, 'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead' and I think that’s clearly true here".

Full tags

Biz, Apple, Microsoft