Bill Gates recently shared an anecdote about his interactions with the late Steve Jobs, revealing that the Apple co-founder once suggested he should try acid (commonly known as LSD) to enhance his senses so that he can design better looking products at Microsoft.
Gates recounted that Jobs, known for his visionary approach to product design, talked about taking hallucinogenic drugs.
“Steve Jobs once said that he wished I’d take acid because then maybe I would have had more taste in my design of my products,” the billionaire told The Independent (via Fortune).
What Gates said on Jobs’ suggestion
Gates, however, dismissed the suggestion, jokingly stating that he had received “the wrong batch” – the coding batch instead of the marketing and design batch. He also acknowledged Jobs’ superior talent in design and marketing, admitting that those skills were not his forte.
“Look, I got the wrong batch,” he said.
“I got the coding batch, and this guy got the marketing-design batch, so good for him. Because his talents and mine—other than being kind of an energetic leader, and pushing the limits—they didn’t overlap much,” Gates added.
Bill Gates admires Jobs
The duo had something of a love-hate relationship while Jobs was alive, but Gates clearly admires the talents of his counterpart.
“[Jobs] wouldn’t know what a line of code meant, and his ability to think about design and marketing and things like that… I envy those skills. I’m not in his league,” he said, heaping praise on the Apple co-founder.
Jobs wished Gates had gone to Ashram
Jobs had previously made similar comments about Gates in a 2011 biography, suggesting that Gates would be “a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
Gates also revealed that he had experimented with marijuana in his youth but stopped using recreational drugs when he began working on Microsoft, explaining that it made his mind “sloppy.”
“I thought maybe I would look cool and some girl would think that was interesting. It didn’t succeed, so I gave it up,” Gates added
“Another thing about my personality is that I like my mind to work and be very logical. So I stopped … because it made my mind sloppy, either during or the day afterwards,” Gates noted.