Can you be friends with your rival? Well, as rare as it may sound, such was the case with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft's co-founder?Bill Gates. And there's one?moment in history that is evidence in itself.?
In?August of 1997,?Bill Gates stepped in and saved?Apple, which, at the time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. To stay alive, Steve Jobs had to step outside of the competitive mindset.?“To me, it was pretty essential to break that paradigm,” says Jobs, adding that Apple was in very serious trouble.
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Recalling how Bill Gates invested a mammoth $150 million in 1997 to save rival Apple, Steve Jobs said “What was really clear was that if the game was a zero-sum game where for Apple to win, Microsoft had to lose, then Apple was going to lose.?“And it was also important that, you know, Microsoft was the biggest software developer outside of Apple developing for the Mac. So it was just crazy what was happening at that time. And Apple was very weak and so I called Bill up and we tried to patch things up”.
“There were too many people at Apple and in the Apple ecosystem playing [that] game,” he explained. “And it was clear that you didn’t have to play that game, because Apple wasn’t going to beat Microsoft, as per CNBC report.
“Apple didn’t have to beat Microsoft. Apple had to remember who Apple was because they’d forgotten who Apple was.”??
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When Jobs announced the $150 million investment at the Macworld Boston conference in 1997 via satellite, the audience booed Gates’.
For Microsoft, the investment meant propping up one of its greatest competitors, but it was also a new business opportunity.?“That’s worked out very well,” says Bill Gates at the 2007 conference. “In fact, every couple years or so, there’s been something new that we’ve been able to do on the Mac and it’s been a great business for us.”
Also, as part of the deal, Apple?agreed to drop a lawsuit?accusing Microsoft of copying its operating system.
When the iconic tech leaders met on-stage at the D5 tech conference, interviewed by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, they reflected on their coming together.??“Bill, thank you. The world’s a better place,” Jobs told Gates after Gates agreed to make a $150 million investment in Apple.?At the time, that quote was memorialized on the?cover of Time Magazine.
“Even in cyberspace, the moment can only be described as?surreal,” the New York Times opinion section wrote in the wake of the deal.
When Steve Jobs died in 2011 due to cancer, Gates honored the Apple icon as both competitor and friend.
“Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives,”?Gates wrote. “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”
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