Despite strong rivalry in the past between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and current tension between Microsoft and Apple, Gates and Jobs had a profound respect for one another.
The relationship between the two men began to change significantly once Bill Gates stepped away from Microsoft to focus on his work at the Bill and Melinda Gates charity foundation. 9to5Mac points to a recent interview between Bill Gates and The Telegraph, in which Gates describes his sentiments towards Steve Jobs:
Steve was an incredible genius who contributed immensely to the field I was in. We had periods, like the early Macintosh, when we had more people working on it than they did. And then we were competitors. The personal computers I worked on had a vastly higher [market] share than Apple until really the last five or six years, where Steve’s very good work on the Mac and on iPhones and iPads did extremely well. It’s quite an achievement, and we enjoyed each [other’s work].
Gates also talks about a letter he wrote when he learned how serious Steve Jobs’ illness had become – a letter which Jobs reportedly kept near his bedside in his final months.
“I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know…There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.”
While Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs doesn’t paint a very rosy picture of the relationship between the two men, there’s apparently a lot more to the story than meets they eye – particularly that the two men grew to respect each other a great deal, especially as time moved on and they were no longer direct competitors.
