Gordon Brown had a lot to answer for

I have been an admirer of all things Apple since I bought an Apple Classic II many years ago.

At that time, I was swimming against the tide because most of my colleagues had PCs and the school I worked in had PCs. The current Windows system then was v 3.1 which I thought was a dog’s dinner in comparison with Mac OS 7.1. It seemed to me to be far less intuitive and worse still was bolted on top off MS-DOS, the unfathomable command line interface that the PC faithful struggled to cope with.

The key figure in Apple at that time was the charismatic Steve Jobs who was hailed as a hero and a messiah; he had come to save the world from Microsoft. Since those heady days, Jobs has been the front man for the company on and off and is still the one that the Apple pundits look to for his inspiration.

Now I read that Jobs was denied an honorary knighthood in 2009 because of then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, according to a former senior Labour MP.

The proposal to knight Mr Jobs had apparently reached final stages in London but it was blocked by Downing Street after Mr Jobs snubbed an appearance at Labour’s annual conference. Quite why he rejected the invitation is unclear but he did and Gordon Brown retaliated by blocking the knighthood. Remember that Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft was given a honorary knighthood in 2005.

These days Steve Jobs is not a well man. Concerns over the 55-year-old’ health have resurfaced since he stepped away from overseeing Apple’s day-to-day operations to take medical leave last month. This marked the third time in seven years he had taken time out because of health concerns.

So thank you Mr Brown, yet another thing that you got badly wrong.