@ D: Steve Jobs And Bill Gates

Jobs & GatesSteve Jobs and Bill Gates are coming on stage for the first time in a joint interview at the D Conference. Pics here.
Gates: First thing I want to clarify: I am not fake Steve Jobs.
Then the two went into the detailed history of how the two companies came about, how they did work together initially, and other details since.
Jobs: I’m a Mac I’m a PC: The PC guy is great…the point of the two is not to be mean. Gates: Shrugs.
Jobs: The reason why iPod exists is because all these Japanese companies who had been in this market could not write a decent software. The big secret about Apple, is that Apple views itself as a software company. There aren’t many left, and Microsoft is a software company.

Today’s landscape:
Jobs: It is a super-healthy landscape. Some of us are playing catch up and partnering with them.
Gates: We will look back at this period as the period of invention.

Five years for now, what will devices look like: Jobs: They will primarily be communication devices, though they will have some entertainment.

Future of entertainment: Jobs: If you are a content company, it is great that people want to enjoy your content in the way they want, where they want. But the transition is difficult for them…they made some bad choices. Some new business models, news platforms, allowing their customers a lot more freedom: it will be really good as a content owner.

All the pics from D on the Flickr stream here.

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