Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates released the following statement on Wednesdays death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who was 56:
Im truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.
Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.
The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.
For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, its been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.
He started out in life without much of anything. He was adopted. After high school, he attended a small college in Oregon for one semester before dropping out.
Job taught himself about electronics and got a job at Atari.
Jobs and two other people founded Apple in their garage in 1976.
Even though Apple had some minor success, Apple was eventually beat to a pulp in the PC market by Microsoft.
Jobs got booted out of Apple by a guy he hired.
Jobs didn't give up. He founded Next Computers and then Pixar.
Jobs would up back at Apple and sold them Next and used the Next operating system for the next versions of the Mac.
Then Jobs completely disrupted the music business with the iPod and iTunes. In the process, he made the record labels largely irrelevant.
Then he leveraged that success to create the coolest smartphone in the world, and then the world's first commercially successful tablet computer.
Jobs is the kind of American hero that the lunatic left just doesn't understand.
Same with Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Bill Boeing, Andrew Carnegie, and so many others. These are the great people who built America.
I'm dealing with my injuried S. Husky that pulled (I hope because I don't want it to be his hip) muscle this evening and didn't have the time for more detail.