Bill Gates not bothered by Steve Jobs's comments in biography

The book "Steve Jobs" by author Walter Isaacson, released last week, includes comments from both Jobs and Gates about one another. While Gates said he found Jobs to be a "weirdly flawed human being," Jobs asserted that Gates was a "basically unimaginative" person who "never invented anything... He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Upon hearing those comments, Gates spoke with ABC's This Week, and said he was not bothered by negative remarks made by Jobs. He admitted that Jobs said "a lot of very nice things about him," in addition to "a lot of tough things."

"We got to work together," Gates said. "We spurred each other on, even as competitors. None of that bothers me at all."

The Microsoft chairman said Jobs felt as though he was the "good guy" and Microsoft "were the bad guys." Gates said it was "understandable" why Jobs might feel that way.

"He faced, several times at Apple, the fact that their products were so premium priced that they literally might not stay in the marketplace," he said. "So the fact that we were succeeding with high volume products, you know, including a range of prices, because of the way we worked with multiple companies — it's tough."

Isaacson's book — which is now available in hardcover, on Apple's iBooks, and Amazon Kindle — describes a number of confrontations between Gates and Jobs over the years. The book states that as Jobs would become emotional and angry, Gates had an opposite reaction and actually calmed down.

"I'm good when people are emotional — I'm kind of less emotional," Gates was quoted as saying.