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.”
