Gates and Jobs Take the stage at D5

The much-anticipated public meeting between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs finally became a reality yesterday at the D5 conference in Carslbad, CA. Jobs had some nice words to say about Gates: "Bill built the first software company in the industry," Jobs said. "The business model turned out to be one that worked very well for the industry. Bill was really focused on software before anyone else had a clue." Gates, meanwhile, praised Jobs for pursuing the idea that the computer could really be a mass market idea and then for betting heavily again on the Mac. Both Gates and Jobs shrugged off the notion that the computer is waning as more and more work is handled via the browser. "The PC has proved to be very resilient," Jobs said, later clarifying that he was referring to the PC generally, not Windows specifically, news.com reported.

For a full report:
- see this CNET article