Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates/Rap Meanings

Work in progress

(As this battle begins, Mr. Announcer gets cut off by...)

Steve Jobs
Let me just step right in, I got things to invent,

(Jobs is extremely eager to begin the battle. He has a lot of ideas.)

I'm an innovator, baby, changed the world!

(Many of the products based on Steve Jobs' ideas did indeed change the world.)

Fortune 500 'fore you kissed a girl!

(A few years after its founding, Apple, Inc., then Apple Computer, made the list of Fortune magazine's 500 fastest moving and most valuable companies. It would be another 10 years or so before Bill Gates met and married Melinda French.)

I'm a pimp, you're a nerd; I'm slick, you're cheesy!

(Jobs had the charisma to be able to sell anything at the drop of a hat. Gates, meanwhile, is just a geek.)

Beating you is Apple II easy!

(Building on the previous verse, Jobs believes that defeating Gates should be a cinch, if not as easy as the Apple II series of computers that he helped design with Apple co-founder and partner Steve Wozniak.)

I make the products that the artist chooses

(Apple's Macintosh computers and professional software are highly favored in graphic design as well as film.)

and the GUI that Melinda uses.

(The Macintosh graphical user interface (GUI) is so easy-to-use, that even Melinda Gates uses one.)

I need to bring up some basic shit:

(Jobs wants the answer to a simple question. He plays on two IT terms, as "to bring up" can mean "to launch (a program)" or "to display (a data file)"; and BASIC was a common programming language used from the 1960's through the early 1990's.)

Why'd you name your company after your dick?

(Jobs makes a blatantly obvious play on "Microsoft", calling Gates' penis both small and limp.)

Bill Gates
You blow Jobs, you arrogant prick,

(To those who knew him intimately, Steve Jobs may have come across as arrogant and set in his ways, and yet he had his reasons. Gates says Jobs is stuffy and no-good. His comments make it sound like "blowjobs", a sexual act.)

With your second-hand jeans and your turtleneck!

(Jobs was known to wear only a simple black turtleneck and jeans to his presentations of Apple products. Gates thinks the outfit looks used, as it might be the kind of thing one finds in a thrift store.)

I'll drill a hole in the middle of your bony head,

(Jobs was almost completely bald by his 40's, and so it was obvious that he had a bony head. Gates is going to bore it...)

With your own little spinning beach ball of death!

(...with the infamous rainbow-colored spinning wait cursor found in OS X, which might look like a buzzsaw. The SBBoD is, in principle, like Windows' hourglass or ring cursors when the computer is busy, but the "death" comes in when this cursor sticks around too long and programs freeze. Yet, unlike Windows' Blue Screen of Death, one may be able to force-terminate the processes that led up to an SBBoD.)

Hippie, you got given up at birth!

(Jobs was given up for adoption by his American mother when his Syrian father left. He was subsequently taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs. As he matured, Jobs adopted a holistic lifestyle approach, and it is said that he rarely bathed.)

I give away your net worth to AIDS research!

(As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates contributes portions of his wealth to causes that move humanity forward, like reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the developing world and finding a cure for it. What he gives away is more than what Jobs' net worth may have been, Gates claims.)

Combine all your little toys and I still crush that!

(Apple's properties combined would be worth but a fraction of Microsoft's holdings, says Gates. Windows and related Microsoft assets account for close to 90% of the computer market and more than a third of the set-top gaming market. Apple accounts for 10% of the computer market and currently does not have a console).

iPhone, iPad, iPwn, iSmack!

(A jab at Apple's "i"-heavy product naming schema as started by Jobs. "Pwn" and "smack" are colloquial terms for a beatdown, which Gates is in the process of delivering unto his rival.)

Jobs
'''A man uses the machines you build to sit down and pay his taxes. '''

A man uses the machines I build to listen to the Beatles while he relaxes.

(When both verses are interpreted as one, Jobs is illustrating the fundamental differences between Mac and Windows users; stereotypical Windows users seem to do more job-related things like paying taxes, whereas the stereotypical Mac user will spend most of his time doing recreational things like listening to his iTunes collection. The Beatles' collection was posted to iTunes in 2010, ending a years-long dispute with Apple Corps, Ltd. in a multimillion-dollar distribution deal.)

Gates
Well Steve, you steal all the credit for work that other people do!

(Jobs' purported arrogance led many to believe that he took the credit for work done by teams under his direction. While this may have been true in Jobs' early career, in later years he frequently invited team members on stage during his keynotes. Ultimately, Jobs handed the reins of Apple to then-COO Tim Cook when he could no longer execute his duties as CEO.)

Did your fat beard Wozniak write these raps for you, too?

(Gates is insinuating that Steve Wozniak was asked to write Jobs' raps for him, after which Jobs took all the credit. Woz, of course, wrote his own autobiography, iWoz, so this is feasible. Gates is also dissing Woz, who has a beard and is slightly overweight as was seen on "Dancing with the Stars".)

Jobs
Ooh, everybody knows Windows bit off Apple!

(In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement of the Lisa and  Macintosh GUI's. The court case lasted 4 years before almost all of Apple’s claims were denied on a contractual technicality. Subsequent appeals by Apple were also denied. Microsoft and Apple apparently entered a final, private settlement of the matter in 1997. This is also a reference to Apple's logo of a bitten apple.)

Gates
I tripled the profits on a PC!

(Gates is saying that thanks to Windows, the profit margins on PCs increased threefold at a time when Apple was losing money; the latter's OS was still a closed system and there were too many Apple systems with identical hardware, which confused buyers.)

Jobs
All the people with the power to create use an Apple!

(Apple products are usually known as the products for "creative" people, since the company sells most of its wares to artists and songwriters. This plays off an historic Macintosh tagline, "The power to be your best".)

Gates
And people with jobs use PC!

(Another counter to Jobs, saying that the "creative" people Jobs sells his products to are unemployed.)

Jobs
You know, I bet they made this beat on an Apple.

(There are many, many people that use Apple products (GarageBand, Logic) to create music, including raps. Here, Jobs breaks the fourth wall by saying that the beat Jobs and Gates are rapping to must be made on a Mac.)

Gates
'''Nope, FruityLoops. PC.'''

(FruityLoops, now known as FL Studio, is a program made for Windows to create beats. Gates is countering Jobs' previous statement of the beat they're rapping to being made on a Mac.)

Jobs
You will never, ever catch a virus on an Apple!

(Apple is known for its claims of not being able to have viruses, malicious computer programs which often compromise a user's data and can impact a machine's overall performance. Since 2008, however, Apple users have been targeted by Trojan horses, prompting the company to slowly reverse its position on security. Apple began implementing baseline malware screening in 2009.)

Gates
Well you could still afford a doctor if you bought a PC!

(Apple products are known for their outlandish prices. In real life, a virus is an infectious agent that makes people sick, therefore the need for them to go to a doctor.)

Jobs
'''Let's talk about doctors. I've seen a few,'''

'Cause I got a PC, but it wasn't from you.

''(Steve Jobs was famously diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, which was also the cause of his death. Before his untimely demise, Jobs had to see a lot of doctors to prevent his sickness from getting any worse.

The details: Jobs' tumor was an extremely rare and inoperable case known as a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which ultimately metastasized (broke apart and spread) to other organs.)''

I built a legacy son, you can never stop it!

(Jobs was met with great successes throughout his life: the founding of Apple, then NeXT and Pixar, followed by his return to Apple and its renaissance as a top media power. In the current Mac lines, the iPhone, the iPods, the iPad, and everything in between, one can see the influence of Jobs' attention to detail and his obsession with simplicity. These are integral to Jobs' legacy. Gates can do nothing to drown it out, Jobs says.)

Now excuse me while I turn heaven a profit!

(Jobs' foremost accomplishments in life came when he retook Apple as CEO and returned it to massive profitability from more than a decade on the precipice of bankruptcy. Here, he knows he's going to die, so why not go out and turn Heaven a profit in the process? Though Jobs identified as a Zen practitioner, he again had the ability to sell anything, and could possibly sell his wares to fellow souls once he got there.)

Gates
Fine, you wanna be like that? DIE THEN!

The whole world loved you, but you were my friend,

I'm alone now with nothing but power and time,

And no one on earth who can challenge my mind!

I'm a boss! I own DOS! Your future is MY design!

I'm a god! Own Xbox! Now there's no-one to stop me, the world is MIIIIIIIIINE!

HAL 9000
I'm sorry, Bill, I'm afraid I can't let you do that.

Take a look at your history.

Everything you built leads up to me.

I got the power of a mind you could never be,

I'll beat your ass in chess and Jeopardy!

I'm runnin' C++, saying "hello world".

I'll beat you 'til you're singin' 'bout a daisy girl!

I'm coming out the socket.

Nothing you can do can stop it!

I'm on your lap and in your pocket.

How you gonna shoot me down when I guide the rocket?

Your cortex just doesn't impress me,

So go ahead, try to Turing test me

I stomp on a Mac and a PC too;

I'm on Linux, bitch! I thought you GNU!

My CPU's hot, but my core runs cold.

Beat you in seventeen lines of code,

I think different from the engine of the days of old.

Hasta la vista, like the Terminator told ya.