The lighter side of the Gates/Jobs confab

By most accounts last night’s historic QnA with Apple’s Steve Jobs, 52,  and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, 51 was a cordial, nostalgic affair.  Naturally we here at Layer 8 need to find the humor in everything so, we looked for the barbs and we found a few:  ·          Jobs noted that his company’s iTunes software is one of the most popular programs on computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Jobs said, some users have written to tell Apple that it’s their favorite Windows application.  “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell,” he said. ·          At one point, Gates said employees working on Microsoft’s Zune portable media player admired Apple for creating the market for such devices with its hugely successful iPod line. “And we love them because they’re all customers!” said Jobs. ·          The two were asked if their rivalry had been overblown. “We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade now,” Jobs said.  Gates appeared flummoxed. ·          “PC guy is great, he’s got a big heart,” Jobs said referring to popular television ads in which a hip young man personifies a Macintosh computer and a Windows PC is played by an awkward middle-aged man. Like Mac guy and PC guy, the popular Apple ads, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates traded gentle barbs in an unprecedented joint appearance in California.  “The art of those commercials is not to be mean, but it’s actually for the guys to like each other,” Jobs said.·          Gates rolled with the joke, saying of the PC guy: “His mother loves him!” ·          Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg asked Gates and Jobs about the future of the PC, noting that the two of them, more than anyone else, represent the personal computer and big operating system and that the industry seems to be moving to smaller devices.  “You’re saying we’re both dinosaurs?” Jobs asked.