Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has now said he still not been able to reach the late Apple co-founder’s mastery of ‘appearing so natural and unrehearsed’ on stage, Business Insider reported.

“Steve Jobs was a natural. It was always fun to watch him rehearse because part of his genius was, when he would finally do it, he would make it look like he’s just thinking it up right there. I’ll never achieve that level,” the entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist said in a podcast.

In their book ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’, Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli had written that the then Apple CEO meticulously prepared for his his keynote presentations sometimes months before the event. 

Schlender wrote that he once spent an entire day watching Jobs run through multiple rehearsals of a single presentation. He tweaked everything from the colour and angle of certain spotlights and rearranged the order of the Keynote presentation slides to improve his pacing. 

Schlender recalled an instance when Jobs sat silently on stage with his chin in his hand and stared at the floor for nearly 15 minutes out of frustration with a wrong lighting cue. 

During the podcast, Bill Gates said that the task he and Jobs did on stage representing Microsoft and Apple respectively, was all about persuading people and companies to believe in (and buy into) the impact that things like email and spreadsheets could have on their lives.

Gates called it evangelisation, and added that some people might not like that he stole a term of religion, but narrating the story of the magic of software was the big part of his job. 

“A big part of the job I had at Microsoft and the job I have now is explaining what we’re up to in a hopefully straightforward way that connects with a particular audience,” he added.