Apple’s Steve Jobs was singular in his ability to take a company “on a path to die” and turn it into the world’s most valuable — in part by “casting spells,” billionaire Bill Gates said.

Gates spoke of Jobs, the Apple Inc. co-founder and chief executive officer who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, in a segment on leadership to be broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

“I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” said Gates, the world’s second-rochest person, according to a transcript provided by the network.

“I have yet to meet any person who” could rival Jobs “in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, ‘Oh, this is good. This is not good,’ ” Gates added of his sometime collaborator and competitor.

Even when he failed, he succeeded, Gates said, citing the 1988 introduction of NeXT, the computer that “completely failed, it was such nonsense, and yet he mesmerized those people.” NeXT ceased making hardware five years later, and in 1996 it was bought by Apple.

May-Li Khoe har jobbat inom Apple och jobbat med Jony Ive. Här hennes bild av hur Apple fungerar. och den all som Ive har spelat inom företaget.

May-Li Khoe: How design and operations really work at Apple

An interview with someone super smart and super talented who was actually there, who worked on prototyping and design at Apple, going back to the days of Steve Jobs and the original iPhone and who understands how and why the design culture at Apple works the way it does.

There’s an article on Jony Ive going around that, while I think it absolutely captures the frustration of a segment of people, also feels like it represents an extreme perspective, reaction, and yes, even agenda, from those people.

Inside Apple’s Long Goodbye to Design Chief Jony Ive

Jony Ive has been leaving Apple Inc. for years. When it was finally made official on Thursday, there was nevertheless hand-wringing about the company’s future.

Ive led a stable, close-knit team of designers who created the slick look and feel of Apple’s hardware and software for more than two decades. At least six members of the group have left in the past three years.

The departures herald a new era. The days when Apple could reliably deliver a whole new category of device — a spare music player, a sleek tablet, an elegant smartphone — every few years have waned. More recently, the company has focused on iterations of its existing lineup. Now, the company needs another hit, but this one will require fundamental technological innovation, not just the design genius of Ive and his team.

An app using AI to ’undress’ women offers a terrifying glimpse into the future | Arwa Mahdawi

‘The world is not yet ready for DeepNude’

Want to see Taylor Swift naked? There’s an app for that. It’s called DeepNude and it uses AI to “undress” photos of women and produce a realistic nude image.

Or rather, there was an app for that: the creators of the horrifying program took it down on Thursday after a Vice article about DeepNude catalyzed widespread outrage. “We created this project for user’s entertainment a few months ago,” the app’s creators tweeted. “We never thought it would become viral and we would not be able to control the traffic. Despite the safety measures adopted (watermarks) if 500,000 people use it, the probability that people will misuse it is too high. The world is not yet ready for DeepNude.”

I don’t worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he’s not being replaced.

I’ve never been an “Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs” person. But part of what made Apple the Apple we know in the post-1997 era is that when Jobs was at the helm, alldesign decisions were going through someone with great taste. Not perfect taste, but great taste. But the other part of what made Jobs such a great leader is that he could recognize bad decisions, sooner rather than later, and get them fixed.

Inside Apple’s team that greenlights iPhone apps for the App Store

In an inside look at Apple, CNBC has learned from people familiar with the process how the company reviews and approves apps and other iPhone software.

The app review process has grown in importance as Apple increasingly emphasizes its App Store services as a source of revenue and iPhone security as a key selling point.