This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube live-stream (Inside Communications) where host Mike Baco interviews Walter Isaacson about the last meeting between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Isaacson recounts Bill Gates visiting Jobs at his Palo Alto home, their three-and-a-half-hour conversation about differing technology models (integrated Apple approach vs. open/licensed model), and exchanges showing mutual respect despite past rivalry and Jobs' frustration with Android.
Questions this video answers
Three and a half hours.
At Steve Jobs' home in Palo Alto (Gates came to the back door and entered the kitchen).
Eve (Steve Jobs' youngest daughter) was in the kitchen doing her homework.
Chapters
What happened during the last conversation between tech giants Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? Welcome to Inside Communications. I'm Mike Baco. Today we go inside that story with Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson. What was said during that last conversation and what was said after that conversation to biographer Walter Isaacson. We're gonna go inside that story next on Inside Commun.
A lot of people came to visit him, but one of the I was there in Palo Alto when Bill Gates decided he wanted to come visit about two months ago. Steve is not the most gracious human being. I try. There are a lot of anecdotes in the book about how nasty he can be, but I try to weave it into how it's part and parcel of his passion. But when he first heard that Bill wanted to come visit, he muttered a few things and the meeting never happened. But eventually, Bill, Bill Gates, who was down in Caltone, just comes to the back door of Steve's house, knocks on the door, comes into the kitchen, finds Eve, the youngest daughter, there doing her homework. Bill says, is your dad here? And she points to the downstairs room because Steve was very sick and didn't go upstairs very easily, where Steve is resting. And they speak for three and a half hours about being the different approaches they took in the digital age. Computers and technology has transformed almost every industry in this country, from journalism to medicine to law, but hadn't yet transformed education. And the schools have not fully figured out how to be different than they were 400 years ago when somebody invented the notion of putting a teacher in front of a classroom. And they talk about all the future things that could happen with the technology. And finally, Bill Gates, who's a very gracious gentleman, says to Steve, you know, I never thought that the end to end integrated model could work, but you proved it could work. You proved that integrating hardware, software, content into one appliance like system could actually work. In other words, very gracious. And Steve, who definitely is not always that gracious, said, well, you know, Bill, you proved your model to work as well. There's room for both models. This is as Steve is furious at Android for sort of replicating what happened with Microsoft in the 1980s. That is taking the look and feel of an Apple product and licensing it around promiscuously. But Steve says, you proved that that open model of open licensing and different competing hardware manufacturers using the software, you proved that could also work. To my book, when I heard it from both sides. But the good thing about the digital age is everybody looks a bit quirky. So when I talked to Bill ye about that scene. He said, well, there was one thing I didn't tell Steve. I said that the Indian integrated model worked. But I think it only works if you have a Steve Jobs there. Somebody with a total passion for absolute control, wants end to end control, is going to micromanage every bit of it until he gets it. I thought, well, that's sort of a backhanded compliment. So when I saw Steve later the next day, I said, here's what Bill said. It could only work if you were in charge punch. And Steve looks at me and says, what an asshole.
