Apple 1997: Failed CEO John Scully’s sometimes funny vision of Apple’s future (with video)

“Although John Scully gets a lot of deserved grief, Apple did a lot of things right during his tenure, including the PowerBook, Quadra, QuickTime, PowerPC and HyperCard,” FairerPlatform writes.

“However, the Apple 1997 informercial Scully et al created in 1987 isn’t one of them — it’s a testament to the failed CEO’s hubris,” FairerPlatform writes. “‘No question about it,’ Scully woodenly enthused in the opening sequence. ‘The 1990s have really been the Apple decade.'”

FairerPlatform writes, “For better and worse, things didn’t quite work out quit the Scully imagined. By 1993, he had been given the boot, though the company continued to decline until, you guessed it, 1997 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned.”

Don’t miss the Woz bits:

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Sugar water sales bozo.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]

21 Comments

      1. but if you believe the Steve Jobs biography, Steve saw Scully as a tool to get the board and investors off his back. Only through Scully’s conniving did he get Steve tossed out.

  1. That was, how would you say…. absolutely bizarre.

    I mean… really? You WANTED that video to be seen as representing Apple. I honestly did not know juuust how much of a clown Sculley was until I saw this video.

    Yikes!

  2. Can’t really watch it…

    But Woz is so, comparatively thin!!!

    Also, this must have bent there future vision prototype commercial, as the one done in the 90’s has some similar, computers doing things for you, on autopilot, etc. Not as good. I loved how they tried to put an Apple logo on the satellite, but failed to nail it down, it floated there, off sync.

  3. The next time Woz waffles on about his vision of the future just remember this buffoonary. Says everything about the dark years that the computer was going to be exactly the same as it was at the time, hey even a larger screen and pervasive colour apparently wasn’t part of Sculley’s vision. Mind you some off the wall impractical devices were it seems, sounds strangely visionary in that regard of the 90s for Apple. So maybe this was just a camera inserted into Sculleys brain.

  4. “Apple did a lot of things right during his tenure, including the PowerBook, Quadra, QuickTime, PowerPC and HyperCard,”

    The Quadra 950 shortage cost Apple millions, and a lot of customers.
    Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard should have been the base standard for the internet instead of HTTP, Apple really dropped the ball on that one.
    QuickTime finally became a standard on PC’s, thanks to Steve Job’s iTunes.
    The PowerPC chip, while it was able to keep up, was never able to turn Intel into roadkill as promised.

    While I’m not a Scully hater, that video is really embarrassing.

  5. I took a lot of heat up my ass from corporate throughout those dark years. I didn’t want them to fail because I knew Apple had a better way of doing things….They made it long enough for Steve to come back and changed the world again! Yeah the pain in the butt was well worth it!!!

  6. No one can guess the future (I’ve seen many tries over the years and any of ours would be the same) The Reason? Because you have no Idea of new Ideas that will come about and be used by other new ideas.. We only guess on what we know now, as they did.

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