It happened in my hands a 1991 interview that is a little gem. The first interview of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together (they will only give another one many years later).
The interview came out in Fortune exactly thirty years ago, August 1991: on the cover there were the two, sitting on a spiral staircase; defiantly Jobs, with a peaceable smile Gates. Title: The Future of the PC. In those years, as is well known, Steve Jobs was in the middle of his long exile from Apple, and had launched NeXT and Pixar. Hence perhaps the defiant look. Gates was calmer, his Microsoft was growing, but it was only with the launch of Windows 95 that he would start flying. The interview was conducted by Brent Schlender, who will then write a biography of Jobs in which he will say that Jobs went out of his way to ensure took place in his home in Palo Alto (in another photo you can see the two arguing, the spiral staircase behind them, Jobs barefoot listens to Gates).
If you have time here you can reread it in its entirety, there are interesting and amusing passages, the two often tease about the future of personal computers and never in a banal way. But there is a passage that deserves to be extracted and it is when Jobs, towards the end, to close a long duel on what innovation really is, cites the feat of Charles Lindbergh, the aviator. He says: “My experience shows that creating meaningful new technology is much more difficult than you think and that you risk being nearly dead when you get to the finish line. Here because when you take a big leap forward, such as Mac, or object-based software, or human handwriting recognition, you have to leave the old technology behind. When Lindbergh was about to fly from New York to Paris, he had to decide what to take with him. There were a lot of open questions that fell into two categories: things that would make her travel safer or more comfortable; and things that would increase his chances of actually getting to Paris. Weight for example was a problem. He could decide to take more fuel with him, which would make his journey safer; or he could take a compass with him, which would increase his chances of getting to Paris. And each time he came to the conclusion that he preferred to increase the chances of getting to Paris sacrificing safety and comfort. This is why he did it ”.
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