盖茨与乔布斯历史性再聚首2007年06月01日 星期五 20:26两大科技行业的传奇人物——微软董事会比尔·盖茨和苹果CEO史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)周三历史性地聚到了一起，共同出席《华尔街日报》举办的“D:彻底数字化”活动。 盖茨和乔布斯首先互致问候，称赞对方为科技行业的发展做出了巨大贡献。乔布斯表示:“比尔打造了全行业第一家真正意义上的软件公司，他比任何人都更早地认识到软件的重要性。”盖茨则盛赞乔布斯勇于承担风险，开发出了令人难以置信的时尚产品。“史蒂夫所做的工作非常杰出。”
两大科技巨头同时接受了《华尔街日报》专栏作家沃尔特·莫斯博格(Walt Mossberg)和科技记者卡拉·斯维什(Kara Swisher)长达90分钟的专访。在此次访谈中，盖茨和乔布斯回顾了上世纪70年代双方的早期合作，并对当前和未来的科技格局发表了自己的看法。当斯维什问到双方之间是否存在误会时，乔布斯以开玩笑地口吻说:“早在十多年前我们(指自己与盖茨)就已结婚，这一秘密保守至今。”盖茨补充道:“总体而言，我们之间没有彼此埋怨。”
上世纪70年代，微软曾经为Apple II的BASIC编程语言中加入浮点计算功能。乔布斯表示:“我的合作伙伴史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克(Steve Wozniak)所写的BASIC堪称是世界第一，各方面都非常完美，缺点只有一个:只支持整数计算，不支持浮点。我请求他加入这一功能，但并没有得到满足。他将我的请求写在纸上，却一直没有抽出时间做这件事情。由于微软拥有最受欢迎、最优秀的浮点BASIC，因此我们向它们寻求帮助。”
盖茨补充道:“通过向苹果出售浮点BASIC，我们获得了3。1万美元的收入。当时我亲自前往苹果调试，直至磁带机正常工作。”苹果推出Mac之后，微软曾在这款新型计算机上“豪赌”，在这方面盖茨和乔布斯达成了共识。乔布斯说:“微软当时还未开展应用业务，这一点我好不容易才回忆起来。”
盖茨表示:“我们当时之所以看好Mac，主要因为相信图形界面最终将成为主流，而Mac将引领这一潮流。这并不是Mac和Windows之间的较量，而是字符模式与图形界面的对抗。”他同时表示，当PC处理器进入386时代之后，微软的“豪赌”终于获得了回报。
作为全球科技行业的杰出领袖，乔布斯和盖茨之间却几乎没有任何联系。在很多关乎科技行业发展前景的重大问题上，二人看法迥异。正因如此，乔布斯和盖茨的会面引起了业界和媒体的高度关注。尽管两家公司曾于上世纪70年代开展而作，且微软1997年还曾投资过苹果，但双方一直保持着敌对的关系。
盖茨1975年从哈佛大学辍学，与童年伙伴保罗·艾伦(Paul Allen)共同创建了全球第一大软件公司微软;1976年，乔布斯同史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克(Steve Wozniak)在一间车库里创建了苹果，比IBM进入个人计算机市场早了五年。由于与董事会有矛盾，乔布斯于1985年出走苹果，又在1997年“卷土重来”，令陷入困境的苹果起死回生。
译文:
The Historical re-meeting between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs re-meeted historically at 20:26 on Friday, June 1st, 2007. Two legends in the technology industry—Microsoft’s director Bill Gates and Apple’s CEO—historically joined together to attend the “D: sheer digitalization” activity hosted by the Wall Street Daily. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs first greeted each other and complimented each other for their big contribution for the development. Joys said, “Bill built the first software company in the industry, and he was earlier than anyone else to recognize the importance of software.” And Bill appreciated Steve for his courage of taking the risks to exploit unbelievable fashion products. “What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal.”
The two technological giants at the same time accepted the 90-minute interview given by the columnist of Wall Street Daily Walt Mossberg and the technological reporter Kara Swisher. In this interview, Bill and Steve retrospect to their early cooperation in the 70th of last century, and showed their own views on the present and future technology formation. When asked by Swisher whether there is any misunderstanding between them, Steve joked, ‘We (Gates and I ) married 10 years ago, and this secret has been kept up to now.’ Bill added, ‘Generally speaking, we don’t complain about each other.’
In 1970s, Software once added floating-point calculating function to Apple Ⅱ BASIC. Steve said, ‘my partner Steve Wozniak writes the BASIC, which is like the best BASIC on the planet. It’s perfect in every way, except for one thing, which is just fixed-point and it’s not floating-point. We’re begging Woz to make this floating-point but he just never does it. He wrote it on a paper but never got around to make this point. Microsoft had the very popular, really good, floating-point BASIC so we ended up going to them and saying ‘help.’”
Bill added, “Through selling floating BASIC to Apple, we got 31,000 dollars. I flew out to Apple and get the cassette until the cassette normally worked.” After Apple’s Mac came to market, Microsoft once betted crazily on this new computer, on which Bill and Steve reached an agreement. Steve said, “At that time, Microsoft hadn’t carry out application service. It’s not easy for me to recall this.”
Gates said, “The reason why we appreciated Mac at that time is that we believed the graphical interfaces would finally become the mainstream, which will be led by Mac. This is not a competition between Mac and Windows, but a competition between character model and graphical interfaces.” Meanwhile, he stated that Microsoft was paid back when PC processor entered the age of 386 Model.
In spite of their standing as outstanding leaders in the global technology industry, Steve and Bill have no commons. They have different opinions on many big issues about the prospect of the technology industry. This is why the meeting of Steve and Bill has aroused so much concern from media and insiders. Despite of the cooperation between the two companies since 1970s and the fact that Microsoft invested Apple in 1997, they are always keeping hostile to each other.
Bill quitted Harvard University in 1975, and built the No.1 software company Microsoft with Paul Allen. In 1976, Steve Jobs built Apple in a garage with Steve Wozniak, accessing PC market 5 years earlier than IBM. Due to some conflicts with the board of directors, Steve left Apple in 1985, but went back in 1997 to bring Apple back to life.