They were born in the same year, 1955, on opposite sides of America—two infants who would grow up to argue over the future of the world.

Bill Gates arrived into comfort. A wealthy family. Private schools. Structure. Expectations. His childhood was neat, ordered, predictable. He learned early that intelligence could be sharpened into advantage, and that systems—if mastered—could be bent.

Steve Jobs entered life without certainty. Adopted. Raised by a working-class family in California. Money was tight. Stability fragile. He learned early that identity was something you built, not inherited.

From the start, they were opposites.

Bill followed rules and then quietly rewrote them. Steve rejected rules entirely and demanded the universe bend to his vision. Bill went to Harvard. Steve dropped out of Reed College after six months, unable to justify the cost. He slept on friends’ floors, returned Coke bottles for food money, and survived on weekly free meals from a Hare Krishna temple.

At that moment, the idea that Steve Jobs would one day run the world’s most valuable company felt absurd.

Lost and restless, he went to India in 1974, searching for enlightenment. He shaved his head. Walked barefoot. Took psychedelics. Learned to believe that reality was malleable—that if you pushed hard enough, something would give.

Bill Gates did none of that.

He stayed inside, hunched over computers, writing code. No mysticism. No drugs. Just logic, discipline, and an obsession with software that could run anywhere, on anything.

The first time their paths crossed, it felt inevitable.

By the mid-1970s, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were building computers in a garage, obsessed not just with function, but with beauty. Apple wasn’t just a machine—it was an experience. Bill Gates, meanwhile, had started Microsoft with Paul Allen, focused on languages and operating systems that could live on every computer, regardless of who built it.

Closed versus open. Art versus utility.

Yet Steve saw something in Bill. He invited him to Seattle, asked Microsoft to build software for Apple. Bill agreed—but wanted to see what Apple was making.

Steve showed him the future.

The Macintosh prototypes were raw, unfinished, but different. Graphical icons. A mouse. A computer you didn’t need to understand to use. Steve sold the dream with words as much as hardware, calling it a “bicycle for the mind.”

Bill wasn’t impressed—at least not outwardly.

But he remembered everything.

When the Macintosh launched, it exploded. Six million units shipped. Apple felt unstoppable. Steve and Bill were collaborators, even friends. In 1983, Steve pulled Bill onto a stage in a strange public spectacle—the Macintosh “software dating game”—forcing CEOs to pitch why Apple should work with them.

Bill praised Apple openly.

Then came the midpoint twist.

Steve Jobs, riding confidence and arrogance, sent Bill Gates a prototype of Apple’s next big machine: the Lisa. Bill turned it on—and froze.

It was revolutionary.

The graphical user interface—the GUI—was unlike anything the public had ever seen. Icons. Windows. Menus. The future, laid bare.

The Lisa launched in January 1983.

And it failed.

Ten thousand units. Too expensive. Too slow. Apple panicked.

Microsoft did not.

Bill Gates announced Windows 1.0—Microsoft’s own GUI-based operating system.

Steve exploded.

He summoned Bill and accused him of theft, betrayal, treachery. Bill listened calmly, then delivered a sentence Steve would never forget:
“We both had a rich neighbor named Xerox. I broke in to steal the TV and found you had already taken it.”

Steve had seen the GUI first at Xerox PARC in 1979. He had taken inspiration—no, more than inspiration—and built Apple’s future on it. Bill had simply done the same.

Steve stormed out.

Apple began to unravel.

The Lisa flopped. The Macintosh struggled. Steve hired John Sculley to handle business, and then fought him relentlessly. Employees feared Steve’s temper. Meetings turned brutal. Loyalty evaporated.

In 1985, Apple’s board chose stability over vision.

Steve Jobs was pushed out of the company he founded.

This was the second twist—and the most painful. The visionary was exiled while the pragmatist ascended.

Bill Gates thrived.

Microsoft’s Windows dominated. Market share soared. Profits reached obscene levels. Bill became the youngest billionaire in history, then the richest man alive. Microsoft flirted with monopoly power, drawing antitrust lawsuits and government scrutiny—but Bill always stayed one step ahead.

Steve failed.

His new company, NeXT, burned cash and delivered little. He salvaged something from the wreckage by buying a small animation studio—the Graphics Group—which would later become Pixar. In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story.

It changed movies forever.

Meanwhile, Apple drifted toward death. No innovation. No identity. Bankruptcy loomed.

In desperation, Apple did the unthinkable.

They brought Steve Jobs back.

In 1997, Apple bought NeXT for $429 million. Steve returned—not as king, but as last hope. At the same time, Bill Gates made a shocking move: he invested $150 million into Apple.

The crowd booed when Bill’s face appeared on screen at the announcement.

But the money saved Apple.

Steve swallowed his pride.

Then he rebuilt everything.

The iMac. The iPod. iTunes. Each product sharper, cleaner, more human than what came before. Apple stopped trying to compete on volume and started competing on desire.

Microsoft tried to follow.

Their MP3 player flopped. Their phones failed. Apple released the iPhone in 2007 and rewrote the rules again. Microsoft, once untouchable, scrambled.

That same year, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat together on stage.

Older. Slower. Softer.

They joked. They praised each other. The hatred had cooled into understanding. Each recognized the role the other had played. Without Bill, Steve might never have sharpened his vision. Without Steve, Bill might never have felt threatened enough to innovate.

Then came the final twist.

Steve Jobs was dying.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he delayed treatment, clinging to alternative remedies. By the time he accepted surgery, time was already against him. In his final months, Bill Gates visited him quietly. No cameras. No rivalry.

Just two men at the end of something vast.

Steve Jobs died in October 2011.

By then, Apple had become the richest company on Earth.

Microsoft remained second.

They had won together—by trying to destroy each other.

Their rivalry built the digital world. Their differences forced progress. Their conflict sharpened ideas into weapons that reshaped humanity.

In the end, neither truly defeated the other.

They became inseparable—two gods of the same garden, arguing over how Eden should look, while the rest of us learned to live inside it.