This one is for Bill Gates.

He was 27 when I first met him. It was 1983 and he was in New York hustling a new laptop (the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100) that came with Microsoft software in ROM. I remember him rocking back and forth, as if to contain his impatience, when asked if there was an UNDO key.

In those days, before Microsoft became a software colossus, he or Steve Ballmer would stop by my office every once in a while to talk about their plans for the company. Later I would see another side of him through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the Bill Gates I remember best is the one I spent two uncomfortable hours with in 1995, in the early days of his antitrust problems. We were in his Redmond office with Dave Jackson, then Time Magazine's San Francisco bureau chief, conducting what was supposed to be the final interview for a Time cover story (Master of the Universe).

It was not going well. And it reached a low point when, in my memory, the chairman of Microsoft called me a communist. Later, reading the transcript, I realized he didn't really say that — although he was pretty feisty. To my editors' credit, they printed the juiciest parts of the interview — including a brief mention of Apple (AAPL) — as a sidebar to the cover.

In honor of Gates' last days at Microsoft (MSFT), it's pasted below:

INTERVIEW

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt, David S. Jackson

[Redmond, Wash., June 5, 1995]

Bill Gates displayed his well-known combativeness last month when TIME questioned him about Microsoft's controversial business practices. These are excerpts from a two-hour interview with TIME technology editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt and San Francisco bureau chief David S. Jackson

TIME: Are you betting the company on Windows 95?

Gates: I don't know what "bet the company" means. We're a company with $4 billion in the bank. I don't think we'll disappear. We're not like Time Warner, with $15 billion in debt. But if you had to take one thing in the next year and say what will our biggest impact on the PC industry be, it would clearly be Windows 95. Windows 95 is a very, very big deal.

TIME: Have you won over all the easy computer customers? Is it going to be harder now to convert the nonusers?

Gates: Well, 20 years ago, when we started, we talked about a computer on every desk and in every home. Now, if you take that to its extreme and say 100% of the people, clearly we'll never get there. There'll always be some people who choose not to participate, just like some people don't use the phone or watch TV.

I see it as a continuum. That is, as more multimedia titles come out, as more information is online, as we make these things easier to use, we start to draw in more and more people. Now, once you get in for one application, the hurdle to learn a second one is fairly low. My dad wanted to do his taxes automatically. Then I got him doing word processing and now electronic mail because everybody in our family is connected.

TIME: Do you spend much time on the Internet?

Gates: Well, I spend a few hours a week just seeing the new stuff that's out there. If you count E-mail, I'm on the Internet all day, every day.

TIME: We'd like to ask you about some of the charges that have come out in court.

Gates: This is old, old stuff.

TIME: We'd like to have it on the record, if you wouldn't mind.

Gates: Are you, like, a historical publication or a newsmagazine?

TIME: Just last January, according to Apple, you threatened to stop developing for the Macintosh. Is this true?

Gates: We at no time, in any way, have ever threatened to stop developing for the Macintosh. I don't even understand what it would mean. It's the most bizarre thing in the world. What would we get out of that? It's a big revenue source. It's a profitable business.

TIME: Borland [another Microsoft competitor] charges that you used vaporware [the preannouncement of a nonexistent product] to screw up the development of Turbo BASIC. Which you did, right?

Gates: No! If you're accusing me of competition, then yes. You have to decide. Are we optimized to help competitors, or are we optimized to help customers? Should we be open about our plans?

Do you understand what is being said here? The question is, are you allowed to tell people what your products are in advance?

TIME: Isn't the point that if you're a small player and you pre-announce a product, it has no effect, but that when a large player preannounces, it can freeze out the competition?

Gates: I'd say that's pretty nonsensical. Let's say you take a market, like the cigarette market, and you ban advertising. Who benefits?

TIME: The manufacturer with the largest installed base.

Gates: Installed market share, totally. So let's have an absolute ban. You may never talk about new products in advance. But people do talk about their plans. You know, it's this damn free-speech thing. It's well established that communications is valuable for the efficiency of marketplaces. That's all procompetitive stuff. This assumes that you like capitalism.

TIME: We don't live under free, unfettered capitalism. Isn't that why we have antitrust laws?

Gates: When did antitrust come up in the discussion? Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

TIME: I guess in Judge [Stanley] Sporkin's mind it does. He's saying vaporware is an issue.

Gates: You have to laugh. I mean, this is a judge who goes off and intentionally reads a book [a biography critical of Gates called Hard Drive] in advance and asks about some of it. It's minor. I mean, you're either here to talk to me about Microsoft or talk to me about that stuff. This lawsuit has nothing to do with Microsoft. Nothing.

TIME: Are we supposed to ignore the fact that there is a complaint that has Microsoft's name on it?

Gates: There are probably 60 cases with Microsoft's name on them. There will be at all times. Period.

TIME: Have you given much thought to succession?

Gates: I have a will written that, you know, talks about how the company should be run and who should vote my shares. There's nobody designated as my successor.

TIME: How long do you plan to run Microsoft?

Gates: Well, I'm 39, and my response to that question has always been that for the next decade I plan on playing pretty much the role I am today.

TIME: You always answer one decade?

Gates: Yeah, that's as far ahead as I can see.

Not for the first time, Time Magazine has included Apple's (AAPL) CEO in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Here's what Barbara Kiviat, who wrote the item, had to say:

"Steve Jobs is great at playing the countercultural icon. He's a college dropout who once backpacked around India looking for spiritual enlightenment, and he takes only $1 a year in salary. There are righteous battles to fight, and with Macs and iTunes and iPhones, Jobs fights them, taking on the entrenched megaliths that try to dictate our tastes in computers and music and mobile phones.

But don't let the black mock turtleneck and denim trousers fool you. More than anything else, Jobs is a canny CEO who knows how to sell product. Steve Wozniak was the technical genius behind the first Apple computer; Jobs saw the marketability. He now presides over a company with $24 billion in annual sales and 22,000 employees. Jobs, 53, is revered by tech and design geeks, but the world's business-school students may have the most to learn from him. Apple's stock has shot up more than 70% over the past year, thanks to Jobs' strategy of focusing on his most profitable customers and coming up with new things to sell them — the ultra-thin MacBook Air most recently — rather than just chasing more market share.

Jobs may be a celebrity CEO, but he doesn't jump out of airplanes or traipse around Africa with bundles of cash. He is always in character and always on message, so much so that when late-night TV parodies him, he's invariably rolling out some new iProduct. Jobs gets called mercurial, egomaniacal, a micromanager. If that sounds a little like a CEO doing his job, maybe that's because he is — and a mighty fine one."

Having already named it "Invention of the Year," Time Magazine didn't have to go far out on a limb to pick Apple's (AAPL) iPhone as the No. 1 gadget of 2007

Maryanne Murray Buechner made the selection and wrote the entry:

The iPhone changed the way we think about how mobile media devices should look, feel and perform. The design is exceptional inside and out: It's got a slick glass-and-stainless steel case and an elegant touch screen loaded with eye candy. It's an iPod and a 2-megapixel camera. Images and video clips display vertically or horizontally — they reorient themselves depending on how you hold the thing. When the phone detects a wireless network within range — your own home wi-fi set up or somebody else's — it lets you tap once to connect, and then proceed with your Web surfing, Google mapping, emailing and other activities that can otherwise be painfully slow over AT&T's cellular network — the only one, unfortunately, that carries iPhone calls. (link)

The honorific was part of a 50-list year-end extravaganza that made picks in everything from most underreported story (No. 1: Infighting in Somalia) to top 10 buzzwords (No. 1: Cougar, an older woman who pursues younger men) to T-shirt worthy slogans (No. 1: DON'T TASE ME, BRO).

The other entries in the gadget list:

• Nikon Coolpix S51c
• Netgear SPH200W Wi-Fi Skype Phone
• Palm Centro
• Sony Handcam HD-CX7
• Samsung P2
• Toshiba Portégé R500-S5004
• Flytech Dragonfly
• Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive
• Belkin N1 Vision Wi-Fi

Can you believe some of those product names? Do you think the iPhone would have made the cut if Steve Jobs had called it the Apple SPH200W Wi-Fi Skype-free Phone?

To see all 50 Time Top 10 lists, click here.

Choosing Time Magazine's invention of the year isn't always an easy task — I know because I had to do it more than once. But this year, in my humble opinion, the decision was a no-brainer. Lev Grossman, who reviewed Apple's (AAPL) iPhone for Time when it came out in June, edited the Inventions section and wrote the lead story, which I've reproduced in full below (Time is Fortune's sister publication and Lev is a friend). To see the rest of the selections, you can go to TIME.com. Or you can buy the magazine.

Invention of the Year: The iPhone

By Lev Grossman

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you:

The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

More