Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates — Steve Jobs and Bill Gates laughing in red chairs on stage at D5 conference

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

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Published September 29, 2026

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates is a four-panel webcomic template that stages a fake conversation between the two tech founders, built from photos of their joint 2007 D5 interview. The blank template started circulating in May 2010 after the humor blog Sad and Useless posted it, kicking off hundreds of user-made jokes about the Apple-Microsoft rivalry.

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Overview

The template pulls four still frames from the D5 interview between Jobs and Gates, staged like a 4koma comic where Jobs opens with a smug line, Gates fires back, and the two share the laughing final panel captured on Flickr by Joi Ito2. Most captions run on the Mac vs. PC rivalry, with punchlines about Windows crashes, iPhone pricing, or Microsoft borrowing Apple ideas3. The final laugh reads as either genuine friendship or barely-hidden shade depending on the caption, which is what makes the format work.

Later versions expanded the target list to include Google, Linux, and other tech companies. The visible warmth between two rivals who spent decades trading public jabs lets even sharp digs land as knowing humor rather than real hostility5.

Origin & Background

Platform
Sad and Useless (blog) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2010

The source photos came from a joint interview at the D5: All Things Digital conference on May 31, 2007, hosted by co-executive editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher1. Attendee Joi Ito shot the shared-laugh photograph that anchors the meme and posted it to Flickr the same day2.

The comic format itself only appeared almost three years later. On May 16, 2010, the humor blog Sad and Useless published the earliest known multi-panel comics built from Ito's photos and other stills from the interview, giving the template its now-familiar four-frame shape3.

How It Spread

Within days of the Sad and Useless post, the blank template hit Reddit's r/pics4, NowPublic, Quickmeme, and Memebase, where users cranked out captioned versions6. Throughout May 2010, hundreds of derivative comics ran across tech blogs and image boards, with punchlines drawn from Windows Vista jokes, the iPad's recent launch, and other Apple-Microsoft flashpoints5.

Interest cooled by mid-2010, but the format saw a second wave after Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011. Tribute comics ran on 4chan, Reddit, and BuzzFeed, often flipping the tone from rivalry to a farewell exchange between the two founders8. A widely upvoted Reddit post titled 'The end of a meme' treated Jobs' passing as a fitting close for the template7.

Timeline

2007-05-31

Jobs and Gates share the stage at the D5: All Things Digital conference; Joi Ito photographs them laughing and uploads the shot to Flickr the same day.

2010-05-16

Humor blog Sad and Useless posts the earliest known multi-panel comics built from the D5 photos, launching the template.

2010-05-20

Memebase's ComixED highlights the '4koma Comic Strip / Jobs vs. Gates' format, helping the template jump to image-macro communities.

2010-05

Reddit's r/pics, NowPublic, and Quickmeme all pick up the blank template, producing hundreds of user-made captions.

2011-10-05

Steve Jobs dies; tribute versions of the format appear on 4chan, Reddit, and BuzzFeed, driving a second wave of the meme.

How to Use This Meme

The template typically uses four panels sequenced so Jobs speaks first, Gates replies, one of them delivers a payoff line, and the final panel shows both laughing. Users commonly write dialogue that mocks Windows, macOS, iPhones, or a shared target like a competitor. A common convention is to save the meanest jab for the panel right before the shared laugh, so the visible camaraderie contrasts with the caption.

Frequently Asked Questions