Jobs kept Bill Gates’ letter close by his bed

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wrote Steve Jobs a letter as the latter was dying, which came to mean so much to the visionary founder of Apple, that he kept it next to his bed, it has been revealed.

Gates and Jobs had crossed swords professionally throughout their careers as Microsoft picked up the pace, while Apple lagged behind initially.

However, in his biography published after his death, Jobs called Gates an  'unimaginative' person who 'ripped off other people's ideas'. In a recent interview, though, the former Microsoft CEO made light of the criticism, and praised the creator of the iPhone and iPad, according to The Telegraph.

Gates said, Steve was an incredible genius who had contributed immensely to the field they were in. The paper quoted Gates as saying, that the personal computers he worked on had a vastly higher [market ] share than Apple until the last five or six years, where Steve's very good work on the Mac and on iPhones and iPads did extremely well.

He said it was quite an achievement, and they enjoyed each other's work and they spent a lot of his time competing with him.

He added there were lots of times Steve made critical comments about him and the more harsh examples, would make quite a litany. A few months before Jobs death, the two had sat down at Jobs' home where they spoke for hours about the past and the future.