Why is everyone saying Apple when they should say Gates ?

I remember back in '97 when Bill Gates announced MS was buying $150 million in non-voting Apple shares no one really understood the reasons which drove Gates to do so.

At that time Apple was free falling and Jobs was on his way back to the top, as the CEO.

A lot of rumors came out: MS needs Apple so antitrust won't bring war upon them; MS should expand and grab Mac users (didn't really bought it at the time) and so forth.

Besides the rumors for why Gates did what he did the fact is: At the time MS bought those shares, Apple was worth $ 14 billion in the stock market. After todays closing Apple is worth something around $ 363 billion as the most valuable company in the market. It grew almost 26 times in 14 years. That $ 150 million MS bought should worth today something like $ 3.25 billion. From my perspective a very good investment.

Therefore I'm here to give credit to the man that saw further, Mr. Bill Gates.

What reminds me of something Abe Lincoln said: You destroy your enemy when you make him your friend. That's what he did. When MS could have destroyed Apple they didn't.

We'll probably never know what went through Gates' mind.

What we do know is everything we would have missed if Apple wasn't around: iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, mainly. Those alone would have made my life pretty different. In a bad way!

A man who's willing to give up his fortune in favor of others; built a company from scratch that ruled our world for quite some time and was the key factor that made possible Apple to be on top today, that's a person we should pay respect to and most of all should follow the lead.

So every time we say Apple... we should at least remember Gates!