It's been a long, long time since these two have shared a stage together, but the Mongoose and the Cobra will join hands and sing "Kumbaya" at The Wall Street Journal's D Conference, the annual head-knocking session for technology and media executives.
When the Mongoose (Bill Gates) and the Cobra (Steve Jobs) last stood side by side before the same klieg lights is anybody's guess, but it's been a decade since their last joint appearance: Gates beamed in via satellite to share the stage with Jobs at Macworld Boston in 1997 and announce a $150 million investment in Apple by the Redmond monolith.
When the two sit down together on Wednesday in Carlsbad, California, the topic on the table will be nothing less than the future of the digital revolution. The Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher will be refereeing this intellectual free-for-all, which the Journal promises will be "unrehearsed" and "unscripted."
The conference, incidentally, is sold out.
Although Jobs and Gates have publicly avoided each other over the years, each has cast a long shadow over the other. And each has been very much on the other's mind:
Gates on Jobs:
"The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC."
-- Business Week, Nov. 26, 1984
"The Macintosh was truly unique, but I personally don't understand what is so unique about Steve's new computer (NeXT)."
-- Fortune, Oct. 9, 1989
"In terms of public relations, yes, Steve is the most successful in the industry. But he does it by saying how crummy everyone else is."
-- Fortune, Oct. 9, 1989
"We think Apple makes a huge contribution to the computer industry."
-- MacWorld, 1997, via satellite video broadcast, announcing a patent settlement, $150 million investment in Apple and a promise to maintain support for Microsoft Office for the Mac.
"Do you really think Steve Jobs has got anything there? I know his technology, it's nothing but warmed-over Unix."
-- Attributed in On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple, by Gil Amelio, 1998
"I don't think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be…. I think you can draw parallels here with the computer. Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position."
-- Frankfurter Allgemeine, May 2005
Jobs on Gates:
"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better."
-- Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994
"The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade."
-- "Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing", Wired magazine, Feb. 1996
"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."
-- Triumph of the Nerds, PBS documentary, 1996 (Ed. note: According to an Aug. 8, 1997 New York Times story, Jobs later called Gates to apologize for his comments in the film.)
"I wish (Bill Gates) 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."
-- The New York Times, 1997
"Apple has to move beyond the point of view that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose."
-- Time magazine, August 18, 1997
"Here's something Microsoft will never be able to rip off."
-- Mac World Expo, 2007, introducing the iPhone
