2000 Jobs returns as CEO

After being ousted from Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs spent 11 long years away, founding computer firm NeXT and securing early funding for Pixar. By 1996, however, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. New CEO Gil Amelio initiated a program of cutbacks and layoffs to get the ailing business back on its feet again. When Apple bought NeXT for $427 million, Jobs came back to the company he had co-founded, initially as a “special adviser.” By July 1997, Amelio was gone, and two months later the Apple board named Jobs “Interim CEO.” He extended Amelio’s cutbacks, slashing employee benefits and executive bonuses, scrapping 15 of the company’s 19 product lines, and dropping non-core projects such as CyberDog, OpenDoc, and Newton.

It was touch-and-go for a few years, but the strategy succeeded in turning Apple around. Publicly, though, Jobs said he didn’t want to stay at the company on a longterm basis, and Apple was searching for a permanent CEO. But at the Macworld expo in January 2000, Jobs had a trick up his sleeve.

After discussing how Apple’s tight integration of software and hardware enabled it to innovate like no other company in the industry, he recounted how two-and-a-half years earlier he had rejoined Apple. He asked the Apple staff who had been working on OS X to stand up for a round of applause, then did the same for some of its advertising and graphics partners. He explained how he had been a “dual CEO” at both Apple and Pixar, that it was working, and that henceforth he was dropping the “Interim” title to be CEO of Apple.

At that, the room erupted. With new, exciting products such as the iMac and a legendary leader back at the helm, it was Jobs’s turn to receive a standing ovation.