Last night, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recalled his last meeting with Steve Jobs in a new interview with Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes.”
Gates revealed in the interview that he met with Steve Jobs for the final time at the Apple visionary’s Palo Alto home in May 2011.
Gates said they discussed “what we’d learned, families… anything.”
“We were within a year of the same age, and we were kind of naively optimistic and built big companies,” Gates told Rose. “And every fantasy we had about creating products and learning new things– we achieved all of it. And most of it as rivals. But we always retained a certain respect and communication, including even when he was sick.”
Gates says Jobs was “not being melancholy, like ‘Oh, I’ve been gypped,’” during their last visit together. Jobs did, however, express some disappointments about how technology hadn’t yet improved education as much as he had hoped.
“He showed me the boat he was working on,” said Gates, “and talked about how he’s looking forward to being on it, even though we both knew there was a good chance that wouldn’t happen.”
Gates also admitted the quality Jobs possessed that he most admired.
“His sense of design,” Gates said of the late Apple co-founder, “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 good direction. And so phenomenal products came out of it.”
