Random Apple Memory
It may have been twisted in the telling, says Adam Banks, but Steve Jobs’ exit was Apple’s biggest drama
When Steve Jobs was ousted. Plus, what to expect next issue…
Whenthe “1984” TV commercial aired during the Super Bowl in January 1984, it made Apple a household name. The company founded six years earlier by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was about to launch one of the most influential computers ever.
Yet Wozniak, after a plane crash in 1981, had already withdrawn from his role, and little more than a year later Jobs would be gone too, ousted by John Sculley, the Pepsi marketing man he’d brought in to help them “change the world.”
At least, that’s how the story is usually told. Disagreeing both on sales strategy and management style – Sculley wanted to establish order; Jobs preferred to work random hours and shout at people – they ended up vying for the loyalties of the board, a battle Jobs lost. But, as both Sculley and Wozniak confirmed in interviews after his death, he was never fired, merely stripped of his responsibility for the Macintosh.
It was a humiliation that must have felt like déjà vu. Today we think of Jobs as a consummate businessman, but in the early days of Apple, his inexperience and impetuosity were anything but reassuring to investors.
Jobs had persuaded Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike Markkula to join Apple as employee 3 in 1977. Markkula in turn hired Michael Scott as CEO. When, in 1982, Jobs’ micro-management of his beloved Lisa project threatened to unbalance the company, Markkula and Scott simply took it out of his hands. Adrift within Apple, Jobs latched on to the Macintosh team, which he would end up leaving the same way he arrived: in a squabble over control. By the time he returned, over a decade later, he’d proved enough never to have to fight for that again.