Al Gore: 'Steve Jobs Was the Kind of Guy that Comes Along Once Every 250 Years'

At the AllThingsD conference in Asia this week, former US Vice President Al Gore had some interesting things to say about Apple’s late co-founder, Steven P. Jobs.

Gore, who served on Apple’s board of directors during Jobs’ reign, said he (Jobs) was “the kind of guy that comes along once every 250 years.”

He recalled hearing Jobs talk of the time when Walt Disney passed away. Jobs, who also served on the board of Disney “used to talk initially about how, after Walt Disney died, the company always got in trouble about asking ‘what would Walt do in this situation?’”, said Gore.

“And he made it very clear: ‘I don’t want that.’ He made it clear to Tim Cook and everyone else. ‘Don’t ask what Steve would have done. Follow your own voice’”, Gore told Walt Mossberg, who interviewed the man on stage.

Gore also mentioned how ”There’s a lot of stuff in the pipeline and the team [Steve Jobs] left behind is really firing on all cylinders”.

In fact, Gore said he believed “Everyone on that management team could be CEO of a world class corporation”. He believes other companies will try to pick them off.

In that respect, high-profile news agencies recently profiled Scott Forstall who is said to be one of the harshest people in the company’s organization.

Jony Ive, the company’s brilliant designer, is also said to be a key piece of Apple whom, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, had “more operational power” at Apple than anyone else besides Jobs himself.

No one inside Apple tells Ive what to do, according to the book. That, said Jobs, is “the way I set it up,” according to Isaacson.