Bill Gates is said to have envied Steve Jobs for his attractiveness
A new biography about Bill Gates has recently been released and it has already caused quite a stir. The Microsoft co-founder is accused of regularly “flirting” with women in the company. Now there are more details from the book.
Spicy insights into the inner life of Bill Gates
The biography entitled “Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World” by New York Times journalist Anupreeta Das (note: “Das” is the last name because there was some confusion recently) has been officially available since yesterday. And the naturally unauthorized biography contains various juicy details from the life of the now 68-year-old.
The relationship, or rather rivalry, between Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is also a topic of the book. Specifically, Das describes an episode that took place at Macworld in Boston in 1997. At that time, Apple was facing financial ruin and was rescued by Microsoft of all people. The Redmond-based company invested 150 million dollars and essentially saved Apple from ruin.
Bill Gates was supposed to travel to Boston to announce the partnership on stage, but the Microsoft CEO decided against it. Instead, he attended the event via video feed. “In August 1997, when Steve Jobs strode across the stage at Apple’s Macworld event in Boston and wowed the audience with his powerful, clear and magnetic speech, Gates was thousands of miles away in one of Microsoft’s television studios in Seattle, watching his arch-enemy,” writes Das (via Business Insider).
“Admiration and envy”
“As he watched the easy-going ease with which Jobs spoke to the audience – the pauses at the right moments, the humor-laced speech, the sheer theatrics – Gates was filled with admiration and envy,” the book continues. “He turned to a colleague and asked, ‘How does he do it?’ recalls one person who overheard the exchange.”
A person close to Gates said that the book was based almost entirely on second- and third-hand hearsay and anonymous sources and contained “highly sensationalist claims and outright untruths that ignore the actual documented facts that our office has made available to the author on numerous occasions.” Infographic: Bill Gates – The Life of the Microsoft Founder
“Natural talent” Steve Jobs
However, it is no big secret that Bill Gates was aware that he had a different charisma than Jobs, and he has already publicly admitted that the Apple co-founder was a “natural talent” in contrast to him.
