May 12, 2005: Longtime Apple frenemy Bill Gates tells a German newspaper that Apple may have hit it big with the iPod, but that its success isn’t going to last forever.
The reason? Mobile phones are going to steal the iPod’s market share. The good news for Gates is that he was right on the money. The bad news for Microsoft is that Apple cannibalized itself by making the iPhone, which became even more successful than the iPod.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t always see eye to eye. When it came to their kids’ relationships to technology, however, it seems they agreed on more than they disagreed on.
That’s based on a new interview with Microsoft co-founder Gates, in which he says he and his wife didn’t allow their children to have cellphones until they were 14 — and limited other screen time as well. Jobs did much the same.
April 4, 1975: Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft Corporation, a software company destined to become a tech behemoth — and a major Apple frenemy.
Microsoft broke through to the mainstream with Excel and Word a few years later, and soon became a key developer for Macintosh software. Then Windows launched, looking suspiciously Apple-like, and Microsoft and Apple embarked upon a long-running feud.
President Donald Trump is set to unveil a new government office today that’s tasked with overhauling federal bureaucracies, and he’s asked Tim Cook and other tech leaders for advice.
Even though Trump sparred with Cook on numerous issues during his presidential campaign, the Apple CEO will reportedly lend a hand to the Office of American Innovation. The new office will be led by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and will be tasked with making the country run more like a “great American company.”
Among questions on his favorite sandwiches (“Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger”) and whether he can still jump over a chair (probably not), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates got asked whether his company had copied Steve Jobs during a Reddit Q&A on Monday.
Gates denied copying Cupertino — but reminded everybody that Microsoft and Apple both borrowed liberally from another Silicon Valley pioneer.
Today marks the 88th birthday of professor Thomas Kurtz, who invented the BASIC programming language with his colleague John Kemeny.
To mark the occasion, the iOS and Apple Watch port of DONKEY.APP, a game originally programmed in BASIC by none other than Bill Gates, has been made temporarily available for free by its developers.
What better way to celebrate Kurtz’s birthday than by playing the modern port of a clunky old 1981 driving game?
Before Bill Gates was, well, Bill Gates, he was the 20-something software developer behind DONKEY.BAS, a simple yet frustratingly difficult PC game in which players drive a car along a stretch of road while avoiding donkeys.
Created in 1981 to show off the BASIC programming language on the then-new IBM PC, an updated version of the game has now been ported to Apple Watch.
January 13, 2000: Steve Jobs’ longtime frenemy Bill Gates steps down from his role as Microsoft CEO, one month after his company hit its all-time share price high.
The news coincides with a turning point in the Microsoft vs. Apple wars, as Microsoft starts a decline from its previous dominance, while Apple continues its rise to power.
November 21, 1985: Following Steve Jobs’ departure, Apple comes close to signing its own death warrant by signing away the rights to the Macintosh’s look and feel.
The deal, between Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple CEO John Sculley, comes hot on the hells of the Windows operating system’s initial release. The pact gives Microsoft a “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nontransferable license to use [parts of the Mac technology] in present and future software programs, and to license them to and through third parties for use in their software programs.”
Oh, boy!
Tim Cook was apparently considered as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, according to a new email released by WikiLeaks.
Written by Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, the email includes a number of high-profile names touted as potential vice presidential candidates, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
