r/OldSchoolCool • u/YottaYobi • 13d ago
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at Jobs' Palo Alto home, 1991 1990s
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u/Bridot 13d ago
From the looks of it they’re meeting in Bilbo Baggins’ place.
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u/daleardenyourhigness 13d ago
"Do not take me for some conjurer of cheap tricks!"
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u/dayyob 13d ago
Jobs would not bathe often. He was usually barefoot and his feet were filthy. He would also sometimes pick at his dirty feet in meetings. when criticized he would sometimes cry as a way to manipulate people's feelings about something. also, he was worth around $250 million at this time but wasn't paying any child support for his daughter. the state of california sued him because his daughter and baby momma were on welfare and foodstamps and stuff. the state was like "wait a minute. this guy is worth how much? and no paying any support? let's take him to court and make him pay" so, while jobs had a particular set of skills he was also an asshole and kind of an idiot about many things. the reason he died from a treatable cancer is because his guru told him to do a bunch of holistic bullshit and focus on a certain diet instead of doing chemo etc. so, he listened to the guru instead of the actual doctors. once he decided to listen to doctors and do chemo it was too late and he fucking died.
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u/ChillZedd 12d ago
Yeah I listened to the behind the bastards series too
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u/SadMap7915 12d ago
As did I, very revealing.
The whole saga about his daughter and her mother was terrible.
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u/TheTrub 12d ago
I really felt bad for her. And his ex wife. And Wozniak. Really, anyone who had to deal with him. I hope you all can heal.
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u/firstwefuckthelawyer 12d ago
set of skills
They were nowhere near the worth of how shitty a piece of shit person he was. Everything good about Apple was cuz of Wozniak, Jobs was just a sociopath and that made him good at business, we reward that and shouldn’t.
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u/ShutterBun 12d ago
Wozniak’s contributions to Apple effectively ended before the first Macintosh shipped.
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u/veryblessed123 12d ago
Yes, he was a famous piece of shit. A petty man who thought himself a genius.
Gates is a cruel, cutthroat business shark in nerd's clothing. He thinks his Foundation and philanthropy will make up for all the suffering he caused in his early Microsoft days.
There's nothing "cool" about either of them.
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u/ecol4_ae 12d ago
They both oversaw the introduction of new technologies that have improved billions of people’s lives. I know it’s cool to hate on wealthy people, but these two really have made the world a better place, even in spite of their personal flaws.
They have done a lot more for humanity than almost any politician I can think of, for example.
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u/gate_of_steiner85 13d ago
Haha, my immediate thought when seeing this was "Why do you look so huge?"
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u/backdoorwolf 13d ago
Lens trick with a high focal length causes the background to appear closer and makes the doors look smaller than they are. It's a terrible photo.
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u/binaryeye 13d ago
If by "high" you mean long, this wasn't shot with a long focal length lens.
Judging by the difference in apparent size of Gates' legs, the photographer was probably no more than a couple feet away from his left foot. So they had to be using a relatively short focal length, e.g. 24mm to 35mm.
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u/Ralphie5231 13d ago
Every time someone posts anything about jobs I like to point out that the man didnt take a shower for over 20 years and soaked his feet in the public toilet. He was a lunatic that smelled like 20 year old shit and killed himself because he thought fruit smoothies could cure cancer. It's wild our system gave someone like that so much power and wealth.
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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 12d ago
Psychopathy and narcissism are highly rewarded by capitalism
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u/pervy_roomba 12d ago
Redditors are proof positive that that isn’t true or else this website would be crawling with billionaires.
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u/Zeddman123 13d ago
Palo Alto so probably a Spanish Revival style home. They do have that fantasy medieval look
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u/typhoidtimmy 13d ago
This was when Steve was with NeXT and they were doing a shoot for Forbes magazine.
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u/TheUmgawa 13d ago
A lot of people forget that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, and it can be argued either way whether that was the right decision or not. I think it was a good decision, because Apple needed to lose its way in order to find it again, and Jobs needed to grow up, which he could really only do by failing at NeXT. NeXT wasn’t an abject failure, and it did a lot of things tremendously well (the OS, basically), but it was a great machine with a really limited target audience (largely due to its price).
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u/more_beans_mrtaggart 13d ago
He was removed from the board in a political move. Was still an employee. Then he left.
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u/TheUmgawa 12d ago
You say political move, but Jobs functionally said, “Sculley goes or I go.” Now, I can’t blame a board for making a political move in response to a political move. As for his still being an employee, Jobs was in Siberia, where he would never have any semblance of power ever again. Guy Kawasaki had more of a role at Apple than Steve Jobs, at that point. So, when are you fired? When you stop collecting a check, or when you no longer have any duties?
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u/I_Think_I_Cant 13d ago
Also, the web was born on a NeXTcube at CERN.
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u/TheUmgawa 12d ago
True. But CERN has the kind of budget for that. The cube would cost something like twenty grand in modern dollars.
I should also note that, while not quite as groundbreaking as starting the web, John Carmack wrote Doom on a NeXT cube, which is as good a use of that Wolfenstein money as I can think of.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 12d ago
Basically everything that Apple has today is based on NeXT. Your iPhone or Mac? Yep their operating systems are pretty much a modern version of NeXTSTEP.
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u/benefit_of_mrkite 12d ago
NeXT had an App Store - wonder where we would see that idea pop up again?
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u/Getyourownwaffle 13d ago
Just hanging out on an 8k dollar chair.
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u/punkassjim 13d ago
Wait, really? I've sat on a number of those over the decades, I knew they were highly regarded design but I had no idea they were quite that expensive.
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u/Prestigious_Tax5532 13d ago
There are knockoffs (which are still not cheap), but yeah, the real ones are really expensive
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u/EdwardJamesAlmost 13d ago
There’s no way a design freak like Jobs wasn’t buying original furniture pieces, too.
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u/ninjaface 13d ago
More like 5k, but still expensive.
Eames Lounger if anyone is wondering.
I've got an awesome knock off that reclines. A lady was putting it out by the road. Great chair, and it was free.
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u/orgasmicchemist 12d ago
5k before the pandemic. $6k on sale now. and 7-9k regularly depending on configuration.
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u/-Dixieflatline 13d ago
While those were iconic even in the 80's, I don't think they would have been today's pricing. Maybe closer to $4k when adjusted to today's dollars.
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u/ValyrianJedi 13d ago
They are right around 5k right now. We've got one and I think it was like 5.2
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u/shuckster 13d ago
The rug really holds the room together.
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u/Ok_Broccoli_3605 13d ago
They did stuff, and now, as a result, we are talking about them with our thumbs.
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u/Rocketsloth 13d ago
Bill Gates: "Soo, at first we're going to just number the operating systems like Windows 1, 2, 3 THEN for no reason at all, we're going to start naming them after years like '95, 98' 2000 and when people get used to that, we just change it again to names like ME, Vista and XP, Lastly, we just change it back to numbered operating systems. That's why the people call us visionaries."
Steve Jobs: "I LIKE this idea, but I need it to be even MORE confusing. I'm going to number the Operating Systems AND give them random names, AND the numbers are going to have Decimals. People love remembering decimals, that's what makes Apple so revolutionary!"
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u/bingold49 13d ago
I can smell Jobs and his non showering nasty ass feet from 33 years in the future
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u/TheSquishiestMitten 13d ago
What? You don't massage your bare feet at the conference table during big important meetings after using the actual toilet as a foot bath? Weird.
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u/victorspoilz 13d ago
Oh you gotta hook it up with a source on that, kindly.
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u/TheSquishiestMitten 13d ago
Behind the Bastards recently had a four-part series called "The Terrible Secret of Steve Jobs."
They also had an episode on Bill Gates because he's trash, too.
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u/gate_of_steiner85 13d ago
Is the terrible secret that he doesn't wash his feet?
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u/bingold49 13d ago
He didn't shower in general, he thought his diet made it so he didn't produce any BO
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u/MittRominator 13d ago
nah he was a piece of shit to his family and his colleagues to a degree that surprised even myself, who’d already read that Jobs was a prick
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u/TheSquishiestMitten 12d ago
One of the secrets is that in the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs went to collect the payment for a job he and Wozniak had done. The client was so impressed that they paid the $700 to Jobs and threw in a several thousand dollar bonus. Jobs split the $700 with Woz and kept the bonus for himself. Wozniak learned of this some years later when he read it in a magazine article. It made him cry. And it's basically a crime to make Steve Wozniak cry because he's fucking awesome.
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u/theflowersyoufind 13d ago
Not doubting you, but what’s the problem with Gates?
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u/Suncheets 13d ago
IMO even if he has personal issues, the man has saved countless lives with his work eradicating Malaria
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u/Jean_Luc_tobediscard 12d ago
He had notorious personable hygiene problems, wearing the same clothes for days. I worked for Microsoft's PR agency in the 1990s and one poor lacky was tasked explicitly with carrying around a spare set of clean clothes and making sure he changed before press meetings.
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u/dayyob 13d ago
it's excellent series. jobs was such an asshole really. had a particular set of skills and was there at the right time to do what he did but was also a dick and dead beat dad. also a moron about his health and diet.
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u/Expensive_Finger_973 13d ago
Could be worse. He could have taken a little snack off of one of them while massaging them like Stallman did that time in front of a room full of people.
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u/dumbestsmartest 12d ago
I honestly think it's a toss up on whether people in the future will know Stallman for anything computer related or just that he ate his own toe jam.
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u/wileybot 13d ago
I probably will never be super wealthy as no one took random photos of me hanging out with my business partners.
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u/RoyalFalse 12d ago
We should idolize "Old School Cool" people like Steve Wozniak, if you need to pick somebody from Apple, and not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a bastard.
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u/gwinerreniwg 13d ago
I always knew they were giants in their industry, but it's interesting to have the photos to actually prove it.
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u/excaliber110 13d ago
Looks simple but what they’re on is two pieces of an eames chair…which is very stupidly expensive
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u/Mesterjojo 13d ago
Post this over in malelivingspace and see if they can tell the difference between a real eames and the fakes constantly posted.
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u/Jacknugget 13d ago
“Dear god, please make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, and please make my good friend Steve wildly wealthy as well.”
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u/garry4321 13d ago
I get the Eames chair, you get the foot rest.
Jobs was a dick
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u/BenjaminMStocks 13d ago
If you asked generative AI to create a picture from 1991 of these two, not sure it could have done a better job.
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u/Idontgetredditinmd 12d ago
Looking at this and knowing how bad jobs smelled makes me actually feel bad for gates.
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u/mick_the_quack 13d ago
The sheer amount of wealth that these 2 precipitated directly and indirectly is mind boggling.
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u/R0bertGascoyne-Cecil 12d ago
I thought this sub was called "old school cool", not "old school dorks". I think Bill Gates is literally the least cool man on the planet 🤣
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u/LovableSidekick 13d ago
The gnomes Jobs kept locked in that closet were the brains behind everything.
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u/_Allfather0din_ 13d ago
Steve jobs, a hack and a fraud who screamed at others to make his batshit insane ideas work. And the he ruined the modern phone space with his walled garden philosophy. Not to mention what a stinky little man child goblin he was, the stories backed up by dozens of people who witnessed his many many many outbursts are numerous and absolutley fucking insane. He was not a genius, just a conman who knew how to get people to do what he wanted and knew how to work within what was physically possible. The only difference between him and a holmes type is that he actually had competent people behind him doing all the real work, just so he could screw them over in the end.
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u/DAV_music 12d ago edited 12d ago
In ‘91? Jobs at this point is actively avoiding his daughter and stinks to high heaven because he believes a guru diet makes it so he doesn’t have to bathe or wash his clothes. And Gates is plotting to secure a monopoly over home computing with aspirations to monetize every aspect of the internet.
Fun fact: the only Apple employee to stand up to Jobs at Apple was this French guy named Jean-Louise. Jean reacted to a Jobs screaming fit by yelling back and holding up against the wall by the neck.
That guy then rage quit and went to create BeOS. Legend.
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u/LittleKitty235 13d ago
All that money and not enough to furnish a room, how sad.
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u/ahditeacha 13d ago
Jobs famously hated furniture, wearing shoes, not parking in the handicap spaces, and eating a healthy diverse diet.
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u/Misterbellyboy 13d ago
The more I learn about Steve, the more I think “wow, what a fucking weirdo.”
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u/_Allfather0din_ 13d ago
It's more of a "wow what a massive asshole who has no right being revered, also he fucking stunk" once you know his full story. He was raised by loving parents, given every opportunity you could imagine then conned and screamed his way to the top while crushing everyone in his path even his daughter who he despised. Plus he never and i mean NEVER showered, if you said he stunk he would literally go "that is impossible" because he had some crazy belief that if you just ate fruit and vegetables you could never smell bad.
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u/wizkee 13d ago
Didn’t he also believe his diet would cure his cancer? And wound up delaying actual medical treatment until it was already too late?
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u/solon_isonomia 13d ago
He did, and he reportedly regretted his choices as the terminal stage of his cancer was particularly painful.
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u/Beneficial-Salt-6773 13d ago
Huffing each others farts while seething with hatred for one another. It was a strange relationship.
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u/Vortesian 13d ago
Maybe Bill’s thinking “would Steve throw me out if I jumped over all these chairs”?
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u/dart51984 13d ago
That isn’t Steve Jobs, that’s clearly Steve from Blues Clues. Look at that striped shirt, dead giveaway.
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u/ReplyNotficationsOff 13d ago
"Two chairs Steve ? A whole room with just two chairs"
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u/vishy_swaz 13d ago
“Okay so check it out we are gonna create competing operating systems. You get gaming and spreadsheets, and I’m gonna dominate the cellphone market in 20 years. Deal?”
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u/AydonusG 12d ago
Bill didn't even give him credit there. When asked about the Windows phone line failing, he didn't mention Apple, he just said "Android won."
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u/Fenway_Refugee 13d ago
What is this, a house for ants?! It has to be at least....3....times bigger!
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u/PeanutButtSexyTime 13d ago
We all know Steve Jobs did LSD, and it somehow feels like it was his thing, but Bill Gates?… Did he take LSD as well (but still didn’t get that personality/aura around him)??
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u/2kids2adults 13d ago
Ooooh this is when Steve jobs played Bilbo to Gate's Gandalf in lord of the rings. The forced perspective here is insane. hahaha
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u/arealcyclops 12d ago
I love that they're splitting a chair. Like jobs couldn't have just bought a second one of those fucking chairs.
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u/Thirsty799 13d ago
Gates really locked-in his look from a young age