Bill Gates sat down with 60 Minutes' Charlie Rose last night for a one-on-one interview that has many in the tech industry talking today. That's because the co-founder of Microsoft spoke candidly about longtime rival Steve Jobs and outlined much of what the two spoke about during their final meeting just before Jobs passed away in late 2011.
Gates said he got to visit with Jobs just a few months before he died in October 2011. The two talked about what they'd learned, about families - everything, Gates said. Jobs wasn't melancholy about the whole situation, though. Instead, it was all very forward-looking, at one point telling Gates that they hadn't really improved education with technology.
During another part of the interview, Gates said Jobs showed him the boat he was working on and said he looked forward to being on it even though they both knew there was a pretty good chance that wouldn't happen. Gates said that thinking about your potential mortality isn't very productive.
When pressed on the issue, Gates admitted that Apple did a better job on certain products - the tablet, for example. He said Microsoft did lots of tablets well before Apple did but they put the pieces together in a way that succeeded. Gates said he wished he had Jobs' sense of design. With as little engineering background as he had, it shows that design can lead in a good direction and that some phenomenal products can come out of it.