Quote of the day by Bill Gates: 'I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it' a witty defense against a stunning accusation

Date:
Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Description:
Apple and Microsoft's rivalry was bubbling over the notion of stolen ideas in the early days of personal computing

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The ideas that we take for granted in today's computing landscape were once all original thoughts that somebody had to devise and implement out of nothing. Both Apple and Microsoft were pioneering companies in this space, but not all great ideas that stuck necessarily came from either company. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it." Bill Gates, November 1983 Best of frenemies When word got out that Bill Gates had announced Windows for the first time at the Comdex trade show, Steve Jobs was furious and asked for a face-to-face meeting. Quote of the day This article is part of TechRadar
Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today and in years gone
by. Read the full series here . According to an account from Apple's designer of Macintosh system software, Andy Hertzfeld, Jobs "went ballistic" upon learning that Microsoft's new mouse-based system had made its debut. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

The two companies had agreed a staggered release with Windows only allowed
to launch in 1983, a year after Mac. Because Mac had been delayed, and that possibility was never defined in their 1981 agreement, Microsoft was still within its rights to launch Windows.

Jobs felt this was a stolen idea anyway and that it represented a betrayal of a fragile partnership. In this meeting, Hertzfeld wrote, Gates simply pointed out the fundamental idea wasn't either of theirs and that the terms of a
1981 agreement still held up. You may like Quote of the day by Bill Gates: "There's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had
done it'." Quote of the day by Steve Jobs: "The only problem with Microsoft
is they just have no taste" Quote of the day by Steve Jobs: "I'm willing to
go thermonuclear war on this" North star Gates' witty quote underlines the frosty relationship that he shared with Jobs throughout their careers, until they buried the hatchet a couple of decades later.

This conflict originated when Jobs recruited Microsoft to be the first software developer for the Macintosh. Both companies, at this point, had exposure to the ideas being developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) especially the mouse-based system the company's engineers had
refined. For instance, Xerox Star was a highly influential predecessor operating system . Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
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Microsoft didn't shift a working version of Windows until almost two years later, and, according to Hertzfeld, it was just as crude as Jobs had predicted. When Microsoft launched a version of Windows in 1988 that Jobs deemed good enough, he sued Microsoft for copyright infringement but lost on
a technicality.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/quote-of-the-day-by-bill-gates-i-broke-into-his- house-to-steal-the-tv-set-and-found-out-that-you-had-already-stolen-it-a-witty -defense-against-a-stunning-accusation


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