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.
A few years later, Microsoft will break through to the mainstream with Excel and Word, with the company becoming a key developer of Macintosh software. Then comes the Windows operating system, looking suspiciously Apple-like. After that, Microsoft and Apple embark upon a long-running feud.
February 11, 2010: With iPad excitement reaching a fever pitch, Steve Jobs’ old frenemy Bill Gates wades in with his own opinion of Apple’s tablet.
His view? It’s kinda meh. “There’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it,'” he tells one interviewer.
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 long-running battle between the two companies. Microsoft begins a long decline from its previous dominance, while Apple continues its rise to power.
December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the height of its 1990s dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a gap at the top for Apple.
After hitting its all-time high of $53.60, Microsoft stock starts to fall. Less than a year later, Microsoft shares fall more than 60 percent in value to $20.
November 26, 1984: “The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC,” claims Bill Gates in a BusinessWeek cover story.
The claim would seem almost unthinkable coming out of Gates’ mouth just a few years later. But it comes at a time when Microsoft is best known as one of the biggest Mac developers.
November 21, 1985: Following Steve Jobs’ departure, Apple comes close to signing its own death warrant by licensing the Macintosh’s look and feel to Microsoft.
The deal, between Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple CEO John Sculley, comes hot on the heels of the Windows operating system’s 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!
Bill Gates just got himself a brand new smartphone, and it isn’t an iPhone 8.
The Microsoft co-founder has ditched Windows Mobile for Android. Despite getting closer to Steve Jobs before he died in 2011, Gates still has no interest in using iOS.
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.
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.
