Why iconic Apple Inc didn't die? Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates explains
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates was one of the most talked about rivalries of its time, in and out of tech space, giving more than enough tales, some real, some fictional, to their fans to talk about. The end result? Building of a myth that especially surrounded Jobs.
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates was one of the most talked about rivalries of its time, in and out of tech space, giving more than enough tales, some real, some fictional, to their fans to talk about. The end result? Building of a myth that especially surrounded Jobs. How bad was the rivalry? Well, suffice it to say that Microsoft co-founder Gates even went on call his Apple counterpart an 'ass****' at times! Nevertheless, the two were always admirers of each other's work and achievements. And, Gates believes that Jobs was singular in his ability to take a company 'on a path to die' and turn it into the world’s most valuable - in part by 'casting spells'. In a recent interview with CNN, Gates spoke of Jobs, the Apple Inc co-founder and chief executive officer who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011.
"I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me," said Gates, who is currently the world’s second-richest person. Praising Jobs further, Gates said that he is yet to meet any person who could rival Jobs in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, ‘Oh, this is good. This is not good.’
He added that even when Jobs failed, he succeeded. Gates gave the example of the introduction of NeXT in 1988 by saying that the computer “completely failed, it was such nonsense, and yet he mesmerized those people." NeXT ceased making hardware five years later, and in 1996 it was bought by Apple.
With a fortune estimated at $107 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates has now turned philanthropist and said that he is not pushing quite as insanely. Yet, the former Microsoft boss admitted to a tendency to micromanage at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he established with his wife in 2000.
After Jobs passed away in 2011, Tim Cook was appointed as the new Apple CEO and made it a $1 trillion company. The company recently lost another long-time servant and its chief design officer, Jony Ive, who left to start his own venture. Ive who worked at the iPhone maker for almost 30 years. Ive`s first design assignment was iconic iMac in 1998 that helped pave the way for many other designs such as the iPod and eventually the iPhone and the iPad.
04:37 PM IST