Photos: Steve and Bill's most excellent talk

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made their much anticipated stage debut at The Wall Street Journal's D conference late Wednesday. The meeting, one of the rare occasions where the two tech luminaries shared a stage, resembled a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enshrinement, according to Dan Farber's post.

Much of the talk focused on the future of computing. Regarding Jobs' legendary product vision, Gates said, "I would give a lot to have Steve's taste. In terms of intuitive taste for people and products, I sat in Mac product reviews...and look at it as an engineering question.I see Steve make decisions based on people and products-it's magical."From left to right: Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher, Jobs and Gates.

The best line of the night came when Swisher asked the two what was the greatest misunderstanding about their relationship. Jobs quipped, "We've kept our marriage secret for over a decade."

The two briefly jousted about the current Apple ads. Jobs said that the commercials were artfully made: "The PC guy is what makes it all work," he said to more laughter.

Jobs said he admired Gates and Microsoft's ability to partner."Because Woz and I started the company based on doing the whole banana,we weren't good at partnering, whereas Bill and Microsoft were good at it. If Apple had more of that in its DNA, it would have served us extremely well. We didn't learn that until a few decades later."

Jobs concluded, in talking about his relationship with Gates,that in the early days he was generally the youngest guy in the room.Now he is the oldest. "I think of most things in life as Bob Dylan or Beatles songs," Jobs said. For he and Gates, Jobs partially quoted the Beatles song "Two of Us": "You and I have longer memories that stretch out on the road ahead."