“Fate had a doozy in store for the men—and they were all men—who dumped the famously combative Jobs. The upstart they fired eclipsed them by many magnitudes, as emphasized two weeks ago when Apple passed Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company in the world,” Weber reports. “The key antagonist in the tech world’s biggest soap opera of a quarter-century ago: John Sculley, the Pepsi executive whom Apple’s board brought in as CEO to oversee Jobs and grow the company.”
Weber reports, “Sculley says he accepts responsibility for his role but also believes that Apple’s board should have understood that Jobs needed to be in charge. ‘My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles,’ Sculley says. ‘Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president. It should have been worked out ahead of time, and that’s one of those things you look to a really good board to do.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: ‘Twas the unprepared sugared water salesbozo who signed the poorly-written contract that unleashed the Dark Age of Personal Computing on the world; a darkness from which most are only now slowly emerging. The fool had a penchant for making unbelievably massive mistakes. Sculley makes Ballmer look like a business genius.
Well now SJ & Apple r laughing all the way to the bank!!!
Great MDN take
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@MDN Take.
Ha-a-rsh.
Untrue. I think it was that firing that galvanized Steve, motivated him even more and gave him some different perspective that allowed him to return to Apple and make it into what it has become.
Not that I’m giving Sculley any credit, he was a nincompoop who made the wrong move. I just think in the end it made Steve better at what he does.
Actually, I don’t think SJ would be the leader and visionary he is today without having been so unceremoniously dumped on his ass in ’85. We should be thanking Sculley for making him what he is today.
OK, *thanking* him may be a stretch.
Damn! You guys at MDN go for the jugular! John Sculley will not be getting any love from MDN anytime soon.
I actual disagree with this premise, I think the firing of Steve Jobs was a good thing… for Steve Jobs. If you guys know the history of Steve Jobs at Apple in the beginning, he was relentless on his developers to the point of crazy. He polarized the Apple II team from the mac team, thus splitting Apple in two. And more importantly, his ego was huge. The firing let him refocus. He built NeXT with an emphasis on the software (OS). And today we are reaping the benefits of all the lessons he learned. Sure, Apple may have been better off (no stupid MS deal, for instance), but I think in the long run, the firing was benefitial to Jobs.
@Macromancer
I agree. I think Steve wasn’t the more mature Steve that returned to the company who realized that people can do great work and be passionate and excited about things and also have a life outside that.
dang, you guys beat me to it
You guys who think Steve needed to be fired in order to change into the current Steve … you don’t know Steve. He would have changed into the current Steve, more or less, in any case. Instead it nearly killed Apple and allowed Microsoft to own the world. That’s not a reality that was good for anyone, nor necessary for Apple’s current success!
Look what Steve did when he got fired. He formed NeXt. Look at Apple now, OS X running the iPhone, built in part from NeXt’s OS. We could have reached this point much sooner if Steve didn’t have a camp of enemies at Apple at the time. (Not saying iPhone would have materialized earlier, but Apple would be even more mature in its products and development today than it is…) Think about it.
Sculley is a classic case of an eejit with no clue who thinks they can run an innovative company by numbers and productivity and marketing alone. Now he’s trying to foist some of the blame (for firing Steve) onto the board. That’s shows his character right there!
MDN take: “Sculley makes Ballmer look like a business genius.”
At least Sculley didn’t dance around stage in a single-cheek attempt to look hip.
If they didnt fire Steve Jobs, Apple would not be what it is today. The firing of Steve Jobs may have been the best thing for all of us.
I not sure that Jobs is not better for having been fired. He surely learned some things at his other companies that he might not have learned if he had stayed at Apple.
I think it was good for Jobs to get fired.
Regardless, bozo Sculley still wrote that contract with M$ giving away the jewels of Apple.
I don’t know. When you get to the edge of the scale where Steve Ballmer is, it is hard to believe anything is past his point. If he looses his standing, I am sure Ballmer will screw something else up and get it back.
Ballmer works hard to hold his title!
Steve Jobs is writing his life story and I’ll wait to see what he has to say about it before judging whether his leaving Apple was, ultimately, a good thing. I held to the Light and did not get sucked into the M$ darkness. Shudder to think if Steve did not return to Apple and resurrect goodness.
@Mac 84 I agree, SJ would have been the same. Apple and the world would be more advanced if he had stayed. However we would not have had Pixar.
Another bozo business decision: Verizon deciding it did not want the iPhone when offered first.
The best thing Eric Schmidt can do for Google is to fire Larry and Sergey, or at least refuse 9 out of 10 of their *new* ideas and plans, assigned each of them a single secret project to focus on, and tell them to come back in a couple of years. Won’t happen. Page and Brin will spend all their money like a regular lotto winners trotting out half-baked betas and try to copy Apple in every step, and end up getting beat by Facebook and Twitter.
Dirty Harry: “Man has got to know his limitations.”
@Mac 84
Did you even read my comment as to why I think it was good for Steve to get fired? I think I addressed (rather succinctly) all your reasons as to why you think the Steve Jobs we have today would have been same today no matter what. It was a direct result of his lessons learned at Apple that he was able to create NeXT the way he did, and ultimately why it was bought by Apple and brought his Steveness back into the fold.
And if SJ hadn’t been fired, he wouldn’t have founded NeXT, which wouldn’t have developed NeXTStep, which wouldn’t have become the basis of OS X.
Etc.
It is what it is. Being away from Apple made SJ what he is today.
If he had stayed at Apple, Apple might very well have gone out of business in the 1990s.
@Mac 84,
I don’t want to sound like I’m belittling the impact of Steve Jobs’ return to Apple. In fact, I’m certain that his return is what saved Apple from becoming just another has-been computer company from the late 20th century. But Steve doesn’t get ALL the credit. He brought with him the team that was the core of NeXT computers software group. You can’t deny Avie Tevanian’s impact on making NeXT into Mac OS X. I don’t think Apple would have come up with Mac OS X on it’s own; the evidence is Apple’s failed efforts of Pink, Taligent, and Copland to produce a successor to System 7. The question is whether or not Steve (& his minions) could have made anything like NeXTStep in the late ’80s & early ’90s while trying to support legacy “classic” Mac OS at the same time.
Those saying it was good that Sculley fired SJ are just rationalizing. Jobs has said that Apple’s problem after he left was they stopped innovating the Mac. What did the Mac need? Something like Next/OSX. As soon as Jobs left Apple, he went and tried to create Next. Jobs knew exactly what Apple needed when he left. If he could have had Apple’s resources to make it happen, rather than scrounging around at a startup, Apple could have had OSX by 1990-1995. By the time Gates had Windows working, Apple could have been a full generation ahead. The desktop computer landscape would have favored Apple by an order of magnitude, and the world would have looked VERY different.
BTW, it may make us feel better to tell ourselves that things always work out for the best, but that is obviously bunk.
The time with Next and Pixar was critical for a more mature and focused Steve Jobs to taking on rebuilding Apple into his own vision. Curious how both the good and the hard times are integral parts of the road that brings you here.
On the positive side:
Maybe there wouldn’t have been Avi Tevanian and NeXt (OSX)
Maybe there wouldn’t have Pixar and the merger with Disney.
Perhaps the firing made Jobs more savvy and more disciplined