Bill Gates was very jealous of Steve Jobs’ magnetism and skills: ‘How does he do that’

At the time, Steve Jobs was set to announce Microsoft’s $150 million investment in Apple but Bill Gates “refused to travel to Boston to join Jobs onstage” and appeared via satellite to give remarks.

“In August 1997, as Steve Jobs strode around the stage at Apple’s Macworld event in Boston, electrifying the audience with his forceful, clear, and magnetic delivery, Gates sat in one of Microsoft’s television studios thousands of miles away in Seattle, watching his nemesis,” the book reads.

It added, “As he observed the loose-limbed ease with which Jobs spoke to the audience—the pauses at just the right moments, the speech dappled with humor, the sheer performative theater of it—Gates was filled with admiration and envy. He turned to a colleague and asked: ‘How does he do that?,’ recalled a person who heard the exchange.”

Bill Gates has said publicly that Steve Jobs was a “natural” when it came to commanding an audience.

“It was always fun to watch him rehearse because part of his genius was, when he would finally do it, he would make it look like he’s just thinking it up right there,” he said earlier, adding, “He was such a wizard at over-motivating people — I was a minor wizard so I couldn’t fall under his spells — but I could see him casting the spells, and then I would look at people and see them mesmerized. I was so jealous.”