( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) The meeting is actually part of the Wall Street Journal's "D" conference, and the session will be moderated by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Surprise! News of the meeting broke in the WSJ. Snip from item by John Shinal:
For more than two decades, Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates have sparred over the issues that were crucial to the development of the technology industry. Issues such as whether it is wiser for a company to partner or build everything itself. Or the primacy of software versus hardware in personal computers. Or which is more important: how easy it is to use a product or what it can do once you figure out how?
This jousting over big ideas, sometimes friendly but often not, has always been from a distance. Until now.
Although Gates made a famous phone call to Jobs in 1997 and the two shared a stage briefly at a 1983 Apple promotional event, the two industry icons have never had a public conversation.
So when they sit down next Wednesday for a 75-minute joint interview in front of a gathering of tech executives, their long history and competing philosophies should make for an interesting – if not history-making – discussion.
Link to WSJ item (sub required), and here's the WSJ/D press release (not much difference from the item in the WSJ, which amounts to a promotional announcement, too). The "D" conference takes place at Aviara resort, north of San Diego.
Reader comment: Colin Nekritz says this isn't the first time. Given that fact, it seems kind of tacky for a Dow Jones/WSJ reporter to describe this meeting — organized by the WSJ, taking place at a WSJ conference, promoted on the WSJ's own editorial pages — as "historic."
Steve and Bill sat down at the All Things Digital WSJ executive
conference in 2005 and chatted. It wasn't official per se but they had
a nice conversation.When I worked for Adobe in the 90s I had the, well, wouldn't call it
privilege, to talk to both of them. Though they're rivals they
actually have quite a bit of respect for each other, did ask them
about the other and both got these wry smiles. Though not first hand
info, scuttlebutt was they do talk a couple times a year, and not
about geek stuff, simply they know each other and have since the dawn
of computers. Think about it, these two old war horses pretty much
have the entire planet's technological industry in the palms of both
of their hands, arguably both are responsible for the fact PCs are so
prevalent today. (My personal take being a Linux/Mac person is
basically Jobs invented everything, Gates copies it then marketed his
cheap imitation to the masses).You can see they do get along actually fairly well, check out the pics here: Link
Jason Chatfield says,
Going from the photos, Here's what I think was discussed at the dinner: Link.
