Comments on: Gates and Jobs share stage, friendly banter at D5

Microsoft's chairman and Apple's CEO reflect on their often tumultuous relationship, as well as their individual legacies.

[oxtail01]

Truly legends in their own right

No matter what one thinks about MS or Apple now, we all need to thank them for truly being pioneers in the field. From the humble beginnings of the DOS,PC, and the Mac, it's mindboggling to see how far we have come.

[notchakotay]

Worked closely together???

Your article says Jobs and Gates talked about "the early days of the Mac when Microsoft and Apple worked closely together"??? In what timeline? These "Pirates of Silicon Valley" were at each others' throats, and Microsoft is famous for stealing the concept, look and feel --if not the guts-- of the Mac GUI to create Windows (that was after he sold HP an operating system he didn't even know existed yet).

Give us a break.

[an_lee]

Apple creates/MS copies? Not entirely the truth...

I hesitate to be a Microsoft apologist, but I also get frustrated when people can't seem to history quite right. We constantly hear about Microsoft copying the Mac, but what most do not understand is that Apple did not come up with the first design for the GUI, mouse, or the WYSIWYG interface. That was Xerox PARC (also the inventor of Ethernet and laser printing).

I've been know to lust after Apple technology, but I am also aware of their marketing power. Don't always believe the hype and learn to separate fact from fiction!

[mdarmocida]

Cut through the misconceptions

Lets be clear, as much as I don't like Bill Gates or his business practices he didn't steal anything that wasn't already stolen. Those of us that were around in the early days know that Apple stole their GUI from Xerox. So Microsoft has just as much right saying Windows is original as Apple does about the Mac OS.

Regarding PC Guy and Mac, those commercials crack me up. As a former Apple employee (who has used nearly every Mac up through G4) I can tell you first hand that the Apple OS does crash (far more than Windows) and has incompatibilities with hardware, and far more limitations with hardware. Also Apple's support was always horrendous, but the PC makers are unfortunately catching up with that bad support reputation.

Lets also give credit to another pioneer that wasn't on the stage, Jay Minor (rest his soul). Currently, I use a PC (Dell Laptop) but neither the Mac or PC has ever recaptured the beauty of computing with a truly useful, powerful, and original computer/GUI. All of which were part of Jay Miner's Amiga. In the 80s my 7MHz Amiga (upgraded to a 68030 at 20 MHz) put to shame the speed, multitasking capability, and graphic ease of anything available today. In addition, I was able to run all three operating systems. A full IBM computer through a bridge card (a true IBM computer on a card that plugs into the Amiga's motherboard and seamlessly becomes part of the same computer); and by inserting a pair of Mac chips into a hardware emulator I was able to emulate a Mac that ran faster than the real Macs. Best of all I could run all three operating systems Amiga, Mac, and IBM at once in three separate windows with no impact on performance (today's computers still can't do this). Also, the Amiga was the first personal computer that had video editing capabilities, which had me editing and titling video as early as 1987. Heck, if Commodore had built in CD capability before going under I would still be using my Amiga today. On the same note, I feel Commodore ruined Jay's creation (which was far ahead of its time) by marketing the most powerful, advanced, and easy to use computer as a toy.

[surfchops]

High School reunion talk

I like computers and I like history... I stopped watching
after a few minutes because I couldn't stomach any more of
the back slapping, "good ol' days" talk. It's no wonder
that bloggers have become such a popular news source,
these old-style media performances serve only to promote
the public image of their guests and to merely entertain
us folks who would really like to know the truth about
these two, probably very interesting but not necessarily
admirable, people. I think it was superficial.