Jobs and Gates: battle of the nerd god hunks sitting on their desks

I've seen the Tiger Beat-style 1985 photo of Bill Gates before, but not this dreamy photo of Steve Jobs.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Xeni Jardin

I wonder who the woman is in that framed B&W photograph on Steve’s desk there.
slightlyfleury

Gawd, this looks like exactly the same pose of Ricky Gervais in that photo shoot from The Office. Hilarious!
Anonymous

Hmmm…Steve Jobs looks like the character Cappie from the ABC Family show Greek.
Tavie

I love how, as someone in the Flickr comments to the Gates photo points out, there’s an Apple Mac in the background on Bill’s picture.

Reminds me of an exchange from Newsradio (paraphrased):

Lisa: Not everyone is attracted to muscle-bound meatheads.
Beth: Yeah, and not everyone has a pinup of Stephen Hawking on their bedroom wall…
calanan

Ahh, I knew I had viewed that images of Gates as an optical illusion and I just rediscovered it. It’s an animated GIF and even if it could be included inline I just would not have the heart to do so.

For the curious here’s a link to a copy of it as found in my Flickr photostream:

Trippy 3-D Gates

(SFW but could be seizure-inducing)

- mike
Anonymous

Steve Jobs looks like a sexy pirate.
Anonymous

Hilarious! And I was just laughing at dreamy 80s pics of Linus Torvalds this morning!
Anonymous

Hi there,
This is Peter Teiman from the Netherlands. Does anyone out there know if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs corresponded prior to them setting up their respective companies?
Many thanks,
Peter Teiman
Drew Moynihan

Sad that I know this, but that isn’t a Lisa in the background, it is a Apple Macintosh 128k, released in January 1984. The Lisa was released about the same time, and though it had the much the same profile as the 128, it’s face was twice as wide with the monitor set to the left.

And wow Bill does look the Nerd, Jobs doesn’t even rate the complimentary ‘geek’ moniker in this picture, much more the very early dot com pioneer look sported in the mid to late 90′s (or did he give the dot com crowd the look to achieve?).
Anonymous

Maybe 128K but isn’t that an SE next to it.
And is n’t that a photo of Gates on Jobs desk?
Questions that need answering…
Anonymous

Maybe it was originally Think Diffident

Engineering is a very ‘trial and error’ discipline
Samuel

The pic of gates is not from Tiger Beat, check out
http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/gates.asp
Anonymous

Nerds are hot. I would have definately done Steve Jobs!
Anonymous

Wow, with an early prototype of the “Think Different” campaign poster in the background, no less!
Anonymous

now I know where the infamous bsod comes from by looking at the back of Bill.
Telecommuting Millionaire

Steve was kind of cute when he had hair. If he would have had six-pack abs then “watch out.”

Poor Bill (I can’t believe I put the words “poor” and “Bill Gates” in one sentence), looks as dweeby as the character Micheal Anthony Hall played in Sixteen Candles, no matter what you do with him.
Anonymous

I made this a while back…
http://flickr.com/photos/addexm/552180581/in/set-72157600364636324/
Telecommuting Millionaire

Steve was kind of cute when he had hair. If he would have had six-pack abs then “watch out.”

Poor Bill (I can’t believe I put the words “poor” and “Bill Gates” in one sentence), looks as dweeby as the character Micheal Anthony Hall played in Sixteen Candles, no matter what you do with him.
nicheplayer

Back then, Steve was only half way to “Think Different.”
Sarah

Aw, Gates is kind of cute. He reminds me of a guy I knew at art school.
Anonymous

I think Steve Jobs looks like David Walliams from Little Britain (probably only brits will get that one)