When Bill Gates's 10-foot-wide head appeared on the wall behind Steve Jobs this week in Boston, the crowd broke into a round of spontaneous boos and hisses. For Macintosh loyalists, the richest man in the world and his mammoth company, Microsoft, is the enemy. And when they realised that Jobs, the founder of Apple, had allowed Gates to take a $150 million stake in the company, they nearly jumped the stage.
For them, it was as if Celtic had agreed to work closely with Rangers; and the beautiful losers were now getting charity from the brutal champions. But for non-partisans, it seemed an obvious alliance. And the 1980s-nerd versions of the American dream which the two men at the centre of the deal have lived, appear uncannily similar.
Both began as computer geeks, pioneered new programmes, started their own companies and were multi-millionaires before they were 30.
William Henry Gates III, known to his family as "Trey", was not born in the ghetto but to an affluent Seattle family. By the time he was 13, he had become fascinated by computers, and started to design his own programmes. At 17, he sold his first application, a timetable system, to his school. They paid him $4,200.
Steve Jobs was born one year before Bill Gates, in 1955. When he was five, his family moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto, California, soon to become the hothouse for technology. The young Jobs was fascinated by computers from the start, and while still in school managed to get a job in in HewlettPackard, to keep up with developments.
Gates and his friend from school, Paul Allen, were accepted by Harvard College, but didn't stay for long. They wrote a programme to run on the Altair, a chunky, desktop computer that could be bought in kit form, and moved to Albuquerque to start their own company, Microsoft.
At Hewlett-Packard, the young Jobs met Steve Wozniak, who was just as obsessed with electronics as he was. They became firm friends, spending hours each day tinkering with circuit boards and software. Among their first experiments was producing, and selling, the "blue box", a small device that clamps over a public telephone and allows the bearer to make free calls.
Eventually, they pooled their money and started their own company. Apple was based in the Jobs family's garage.
Back then, it was hard to take Bill Gates seriously. He had freckles and a squeaky voice, his wardrobe ranged from downbeat to scruffy, and at business meetings he unconsciously rocked back and forth on his chair. This was how he and Paul Allen rolled into IBM in 1980, looking for business.
Known as "Big Blue", IBM was then by far the biggest and most powerful technology company in the world. The executives saw Gates's talent, and the attraction of the operating system he was offering - MS-DOS - and signed an agreement with the start-up company to provide the programme for IBM machines.
What they didn't spot at that crucial meeting was his business acumen, and it cost them dearly. It also set Microsoft well on its way to world domination.
Gates and Allen had long believed that software would ultimately prove more valuable a product than hardware, a suggestion that would have been anathema to the machine-centred IBM. The two young men managed to retain the right to license their own operating system to other manufacturers.
The decision spawned an entire industry of "IBM-compatible" personal computers, all using Microsoft's DOS programme.
Back in the garage, the two Steves were making a name for themselves. Working on credit, they built their first 50 Apple computers, and used the money to build a better model.
The "Apple II" was way ahead of its time, complete with colour graphics. The two lads attracted the attention of a retired Intel executive who agreed to bankroll the new company.
By now, Steve Jobs had developed the capacity to inspire others with his dream of a beautiful, graphics-driven computer operating system. He convinced some of the best brains in the computer business to join the growing company.
He watched as Bill Gates's MS-DOS appeared on IBM personal computers in 1981, but concentrated on his own project, a mouse-controlled user interface. It took millions of dollars for the first Macintosh to be designed, but it appeared, to great acclaim, in 1984.
By now, Apple was a public company, and Jobs had made a fortune from his shares in it. His dream product was on the shelves, it was inexpensive and easy to use. Also, unlike IBM, Apple owned its own operating system, so no other computer company could use it.
But 1985 brought trouble to Apple, and the directors of its board were fighting like weasels in a sack. Jobs, fabulously wealthy, was forced out of the company he had founded.
THE following year, it was Bill Gates's turn to taste serious wealth as Microsoft floated on the Nasdaq, and, at 31, he was a billionaire.
As Microsoft has gone from strength to strength, Apple has stumbled, ratcheting up the losses and losing more and more market share, and eventually recalling Jobs as a consultant. Now, more than 85 per cent of the world's personal computers use Windows, which Apple has always contended is merely a poor copy of its Macintosh system.
Bill Gates still flies economy class, and says he will give away 95 per cent of his fortune to scientific and charitable causes.
He is still driven by nature. An example: his wife, Melinda, is a Catholic who goes to Mass and wants to bring up their daughter in the faith. He has said he would prefer that his child be raised in a religion "that has less theology and all".
"She offered me a deal. If I start going to church - my family was Congregationalist - then Jennifer could be raised in whatever religion I choose," he said recently.
"But just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient," he complained. "There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."
Steve Jobs, back at his desk in Apple, has shown that he can still inspire. His very presence has given the company a new sense or purpose, and he has built confidence outside by attracting a succession of industry heavyweights to the boardroom.
What he displayed this week was the same business acumen that he did back in the garage in Palo Alto. Instead of indulging an emotion-fuelled underdog relationship with Microsoft, he kept Apple's eyes on the prize: to get more companies to write their software for Macintosh, and stanch the decline in sales.
"We need all the help we can get," he told stunned Macintosh dealers. "And if we screw up and don't do a good job, it's not someone else's fault, it's our fault. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we'd better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude."
Oh it wasn't pretty, but it had to be done. And who, but Jobs, could have pulled it off?