Steve Jobs Thought of Bill Gates as 'Unimaginative' [Updated]

In yet another excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, the late Apple co-founder is quoted as saying that Bill Gates, ex CEO of Microsoft, lacked imagination, couldn’t invent anything, and therefore ended up stealing other’s ideas to rise to fame.

According to Isaacson’s book, Jobs said about Gates, “He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

Jobs was known to have taken drugs when he was young. He once called his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".

For his part, Bill Gates also had a few differences to note at one point. But unlike Jobs, Gates also admired his rival: “He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works,” Gates said, according to reports.

Jobs also said about Gates that he was “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,” he said, according to Walter Isaacson’s account.

For those who would like to learn more about what set the two men apart, I recommend watching Pirates of Silicon Valley, a 1999 film based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.

The docudrama documents the rise of the personal computer as a result of the rivalry between Apple Computer and Microsoft - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The movie is written and directed by Martyn Burke, and stars Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as young Steve Jobs.

After the film was aired, Jobs reportedly contacted Noah Wyle to tell him that, despite not caring much for the film, he thought Wyle had done "a good job" of impersonating him.

Update: updated headline to remove claim that Steve Jobs had 'despised' Gates for being unimaginative. The speculation may have been a tad harsh in light of several reports saying that Jobs thought highly of Gates on multiple occasions, despite their many differences.