While they might not have always been close friends, it's undeniable that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates' concurrent impact on the technology world caused their paths to intertwine, and a resurfaced interview of the pair has led many to notice one heart rendering detail.
Having founded their respective technology companies at roughly the same time, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs became natural competitors who battled for decades for the chance to become the leading face of a rapidly growing computer market.
In the early days of Microsoft and Apple both threw accusations of idea theft at each other, as per Business Insider, and this encapsulated their shared win-at-all-costs attitude that gave them little chance to grow close at that point.
Insults were repeatedly hurled at one another into the 1990s, but in 1997 things appeared to chance once Jobs accepted a major investment from Gates and Microsoft that would keep Apple afloat, and it was clear that they both respected each other behind the fierce rivalry.
Advert
For many, this admiration was most apparent during a 2007 interview at the AllThingsD conference, where Gates and Jobs shared the stage together.
Among questions about their competitive nature, each company's software, and other rival products, there was also plenty of praise thrown around that shattered any notions of hatred between the two of them.
"I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste," Gates admitted when sat next to the man who had been his main rival for over two decades at that point, but it is one heart rendering comment from the Apple founder that has stuck with many for years.
Right at the end of the interview, Jobs had this to say about his relationship with Gates, in spite of the hardship: "I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there's that one line in that one Beatles song, 'you and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead', and that's clearly true here," Gates revealed.
That line, from the song 'Two of Us' which many believe to be about Paul McCartney and John Lennon, shows a clear connection between Gates and Jobs that's impossible to dismiss, rivalry and friendship included.
Many in the comments underneath a clip of interview have also noted the power of this line in relation to Jobs' cancer diagnosis, as it would only be four more years before he passed away from a tumor-related respiratory arrest in 2011.
Additionally, this interview in May 2007 was just over a year after Jobs found out that his pancreatic cancer had returned - something that allegedly only Jobs himself, his wife Laurene Powell, his doctors, and Bob Iger knew at the time.
"It's much deeper when you realize he knew he didn't have that much longer here," writes one comment, with another adding that "this cuts deep watching it in 2023."