Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates released the following statement on Wednesday’s death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who was 56:
I’m 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, it’s 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.
No denying Jobs ability, his influence, his sucess.
That said, the guy was also a complete and total asshole, who's destructive tendencies gave Microsoft 95% market share for decades. And kept Apple a tiny alternative for two decades
The Pirates of Silicon Valley is a very instructive movie. Its worth noting Jobs never disputed legally anything in it.
All that noted, a real American genius has passed away. RIP.
That said, the guy was also a complete and total asshole, who's destructive tendencies gave Microsoft 95% market share for decades. And kept Apple a tiny alternative for two decades
Steve was an asshole in his early years, knew he was an asshole and actively worked on overcoming his assholeness - that's part of being a liberal, facing reality and working on change.
Apple may have had a tiny market share, however it had mighty market influence and was THE standard for creative people.
No doubt the products had their uses within very narrowly defined sub sets of the economy.
But sorry, he never worked at overcoming being an asshole. He worked at keeping it hidden from public view, only after decades of being rendered an 'also ran' because of his stupidity as it relates to understanding markets, buying habits, and affordability among common every day people.
Eventually he woke up to the simple undeniable truth. Bill Gates ate him alive for decades, and history proved Gates was correct about the future of computing.
He was a genius, no denying it here. And many genius's are arrogant assholes. His problem was he believed he was so right about everything, that people/customers would follow his lead because of his shear brilliance.
History is repleat with those types of personalities. Instead of realize he was making a huge mistake as it related to the available market, he let his massive insatiable ego run rampant. And thats how Gates and Microsoft rendered him an also ran for two decades, in every home, and in every business, as it relates to pc's.
