Speaking in an insightful television interview, Microsoft’s chairman Bill Gates has lauded his former rival and Apple supremo Steve Jobs, describing him as amazing.
Speaking to CBS News, Gates described how the pair “grew up together” and spent time together shortly before Jobs, who co-founded Apple, passed away in October 2011.
Gates said: “We talked about what we’d learned, about families, everything. He was not being melancholy, it was very forward-looking, saying we haven’t really improved education with technology.”
Microsoft have remained in close competition with each other since the 1980s, but Gates praised Jobs’ brand awareness.
He added: “We did lots of tablets well before Apple did but they put the pieces together in a way that succeeded.
“His sense of design, that everything had to fit a certain aesthetic, the fact that he, with as little engineering background as he had – it shows that design can lead you in a certain direction so that phenomenal products came out of it.
“He knew about brand in a very positive sense. He had an intuitive sense of marketing that was amazing.”
