Bill Gates praises Steve Jobs for saving Apple
When asked about Steve Jobs in a TV special that aired this week, Bill Gates said the Apple co-founder has shown "more inspiration" than any other leader in the tech industry.
The program "Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great" aired Thursday night on CNBC. The "Town Hall Event" featured questions from the audience directed towards two of the world's richest men.
One audience member asked Gates, to laughter from the audience, what his thoughts were on Jobs and the work he has done as CEO of Apple. The Microsoft founder had fond words for his rival.
"Well, he's done a fantastic job," Gates said. "Apple is in a bit of a different business where they make hardware and software together. But when Steve was coming back to Apple, which was actually through an acquisition of NeXT that he ran, Apple was in very tough shape. In fact, most likely it wasn't going to survive."
He continued: "And he brought in a team, he brought in inspiration about great products and design that's made Apple back into being an incredible force in doing good things. And it's great to have competitors like that. We write software for Apple, Microsoft does. They compete with Apple. But he, of all the leaders in the industry that I've worked with, he showed more inspiration and he saved the company."
In 2007, both Gates and Jobs sat down side-by-side for an interview with Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal at the D5 conference. In that talk, both influential technology leaders were complimentary of one another.
Jobs credited Gates for being the first to build a company solely around software, rather than depending on customized software. Gates responded by crediting Apple's populist approach with Jobs at the helm.
In that interview, Gates revealed that Microsoft shifted away from developing software for the Mac around the time of Jobs' departure, a move made mostly due to his absence.
"We worried that Apple wasn?t differentiating itself from the other platforms?Windows and DOS," Gates said in 2007. "The product line just didn?t evolve the way it needed to. Certainly not the way it would have if Steve had been there."
As the Microsoft co-founder noted in his comments on CNBC this week, though the company still competes with Apple, it also continues to write software for the Mac platform. Next year, Microsoft plans to release Office 2010 for Mac, with a new version of Outlook based on Cocoa, the development layer of Mac OS X.
The program "Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great" aired Thursday night on CNBC. The "Town Hall Event" featured questions from the audience directed towards two of the world's richest men.
One audience member asked Gates, to laughter from the audience, what his thoughts were on Jobs and the work he has done as CEO of Apple. The Microsoft founder had fond words for his rival.
"Well, he's done a fantastic job," Gates said. "Apple is in a bit of a different business where they make hardware and software together. But when Steve was coming back to Apple, which was actually through an acquisition of NeXT that he ran, Apple was in very tough shape. In fact, most likely it wasn't going to survive."
He continued: "And he brought in a team, he brought in inspiration about great products and design that's made Apple back into being an incredible force in doing good things. And it's great to have competitors like that. We write software for Apple, Microsoft does. They compete with Apple. But he, of all the leaders in the industry that I've worked with, he showed more inspiration and he saved the company."
In 2007, both Gates and Jobs sat down side-by-side for an interview with Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal at the D5 conference. In that talk, both influential technology leaders were complimentary of one another.
Jobs credited Gates for being the first to build a company solely around software, rather than depending on customized software. Gates responded by crediting Apple's populist approach with Jobs at the helm.
In that interview, Gates revealed that Microsoft shifted away from developing software for the Mac around the time of Jobs' departure, a move made mostly due to his absence.
"We worried that Apple wasn?t differentiating itself from the other platforms?Windows and DOS," Gates said in 2007. "The product line just didn?t evolve the way it needed to. Certainly not the way it would have if Steve had been there."
As the Microsoft co-founder noted in his comments on CNBC this week, though the company still competes with Apple, it also continues to write software for the Mac platform. Next year, Microsoft plans to release Office 2010 for Mac, with a new version of Outlook based on Cocoa, the development layer of Mac OS X.
Comments
Now thank Steve for all the inspiration he provided you for Windows.
That's right, Bill.
Now thank Steve for all the inspiration he provided you for Windows.
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More like all the inspiration Bill provided Steve in making a fortune.
Fair enough comments, kind of gracious actually. If only Steve Balmer was the same.
SoMehow the word gracious doesn't quite come to mind when thinking of Steve Ballmer, no matter what the setting.
As to Ballmer... nahhh, not gonna happen!
More like all the inspiration Bill provided Steve in making a fortune.
for real - what does that even mean? First of all, most of Jobs' fortune is in Disney, not Apple. Second of all, most of Jobs' Appel-based fortune is directly due to the success of the iPod and iPhone, which Gates and MS had absolutely nothing to do with.
Par for the course with another baseless teckdud comment.
M$ is primarily a copying company, after all.
That Steve Jobs learned to accept the Thief M$ always nipping at his heels and move beyond that albatross speaks to what a high-minded and great man Steve Jobs has become.
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More like all the inspiration Bill provided Steve in making a fortune.
What the hell does that even mean?
2 indisputable geniuses of Tech! If Bill Gates didn't step down, MSFT would be $200+ too. His only mistake was trusting Steve "the Bonehead" Ballmer.
I don't think so. Gates often gets too much credit. Much of the culture we see at Microsoft today was his creation. Steve Blamer didn't make it any better, but I'm not sure he made it much worse.
2 indisputable geniuses of Tech! If Bill Gates didn't step down, MSFT would be $200+ too. His only mistake was trusting Steve "the Bonehead" Ballmer.
microsoft at $200 makes them a $1.7 Trillion company. That's trillion, with a T. Exaggeration much?
for real - what does that even mean? First of all, most of Jobs' fortune is in Disney, not Apple. Second of all, most of Jobs' Appel-based fortune is directly due to the success of the iPod and iPhone, which Gates and MS had absolutely nothing to do with.
Par for the course with another baseless teckdud comment.
Well what did the statment I was responding to mean?
As for baseless- ask yourself - when exactly did Bill Gates make his fortune and how large is it. 'nuff said.
What the hell does that even mean?
Well what does yours mean?
I don't think so. Gates often gets too much credit. Much of the culture we see at Microsoft today was his creation. Steve Blamer didn't make it any better, but I'm not sure he made it much worse.
Microsoft has been asleep at the wheel for so long, on so many fronts, it's hard to pinpoint blame at this point.
Well what does yours mean?
Well what do you think it means??
It means that without Apple, Windows wouldn't be nearly as usable as it is today. In fact without Apple, the entire tech industry would still be in the Dark Ages. MS follows Apple. The industry at large follows Apple. MS got all their ideas from Apple and continues to do so, even making headlines about it!
Well what did the statment I was responding to mean?
As for baseless- ask yourself - when exactly did Bill Gates make his fortune and how large is it. 'nuff said.
The statement you were responding to, "Now thank Steve for all the inspiration he provided you for Windows" is pretty obvious. It claims, like a recent MS exec admitted, that Windows draws heavily from OSX. They can issue a press release retracting the execs comments all they want, but that doesn't change the fact that Windows trails OSX in innovation and "look and feel."
Gates and Jobs were both multi-millionaires by the mid-80's, if not much earlier. What's your point?
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More like all the inspiration Bill provided Steve in making a fortune.
TechDud, in another thread I said it was possible that people might take you for a fool. Now I can see why they should.