Steve Jobs appears to have made peace with Microsoft’s Bill Gates by the end of the Apple co-founder’s life, with the two men spending more than three hours reminiscing together in May, according to a New York Times report on the soon-to-be-released Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
But the Apple co-founder also didn’t mince any words in sharing his thoughts on Gates for the book.
The Huffington Post, which also obtained the biography, quotes this line: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
And also this one: “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
The book also shows Jobs to be extremely pissed about Google’s move into mobile phones through its work on Android, calling it “grand theft” of Apple’s iPhone design. The Associated Press, which also got an advance copy, has more on that topic in this story.
As we learned with Paul Allen’s “Idea Man,” these early excerpts can provide an incomplete picture of the larger book, but it’s clear that the Jobs biography provides unvarnished take on Jobs’ competitors, at least, and presumably of the man himself, as well.
60 Minutes will air an interview with Isaacson on Sunday (preview here). The book comes out Monday.
Previously: Bill Gates: Working with Steve Jobs was ‘an insanely great honor’
