The Parable of the Turtleneck

The D5 conference the year before had put Gates and Jobs on stage together—relaxed, almost warm toward each other—and the internet had done what it always does with that kind of footage: turned it into a loyalty test. Pick a side. The Mac/PC ads were running on every channel at this point, doing the same thing more bluntly, with Justin Long as effortless cool and John Hodgman as sweaty apologetic nerd. The subtext was never very sub.

What I actually thought, watching the D5 footage, was that Jobs was performing harder than Gates was. Gates was just sitting there being Bill Gates—slightly awkward, visibly human, not particularly trying. Jobs was "being Steve Jobs" in a way that had clearly become its own full-time occupation. The turtleneck as costume. The pauses as theatre. Not a criticism exactly—it worked, legendarily—but it did make me wonder which one of them was being more honest about what he was doing.

You either clock it immediately or you don’t.