What Happened to Jobs?

kissenger · Feb 19th, 2005, 10:33 PM

Macaholic said "Who knows what would have happened with Apple had Jobs not been ousted in '85?" in another thread. Can someone fill me in on what happened. I had just assumed Jobs had always been in charge.

MacDaddy · Feb 19th, 2005, 11:00 PM

In a nut shell:

1985: Jobs essentially ousted from Apple in a boardroom coup after a power struggle with Sculley; resigned with $150 million but personally hurt; formed NeXT Software to develop computer hardware and software

Macaholic · Feb 19th, 2005, 11:28 PM

In a not-so-small bushel of nutshells:

It's an amazing set of events... if you can figure out the true story.

There are varying accounts of what happened back then in 1985 when Jobs left Apple -- only a year after the Macintoish project he lead released the Mac. Jobs is infamous for being a moody, sometimes harsh and mercurial man (hopefully, he's mellowed in his older age). He stepped on a lot of toes and frankly was said to be a real asshoe at times. He was a loose canon, often (apparantly) manipulating employees against each other between the Macintosh computer group (which he lead) and the original Apple computer group (still developing Apple computers that ran a command-line interface).

What appears to be consistant in the different accounts is that Jobs was stripped of power, being relegated to lesser duties at Apple. By now, Apple had gone public with a stock issue and had a board. So, Jobs' power was NOT absolute. Apple CEO John Sculley moved him to an office in anoher building, dubbed "Siberia" around Apple and his responsibilities diminished.

The story getss fuzzy as to his actual departure. Some books say he just felt underutilized and resigned to go on to do other things. Other accounts say that he actually attempted a boardroom coup to get Sculley out. The night before a (Steve Jobs arranged) trip to China for him, Sculley was tipped off to the coup to be pulled during his absence. It's said that Sculley cancelled his trip and called a board mertting the next day. He gave the board the "it's either me or him" ultimatum... and the board went with Sculley. Jobs was out. That was in 1985.

Now, I don't know if this timeline is true, but the other juicy aspect to this is that Jobs was trying to get people out of Apple to start a new company WHILE he was in "Siberia" -- as in still working for Apple, but planning to rob them of some talent and lead an exodus to this new computer comany. I don't know if he did this while at Apple or not, but when he left Apple he definitely styarted anpther company called The NeXT Computer Company. Like Apple, they build the hardware (RISC-based -- same processors as Apple's) and the OS, but this time, Jobs went with... wait for it now... open-source BSD UNIX. The OS was excellent, the hardware advanced, looked awesome... and was expensive. It didn't sell well. Eventually, NeXt dropped the hardware division and ported the OS to run on x86 PCs as well as PPC systems.

Durng his time away from Apple, Steve Jobs also purhcased George Lucas' computer animation department for (I think I read) ten milion bucks. It's called PIXAR! Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Monsters Inc. Fining Nemo and The Incredibles. ALL done by Pixar. A huge success.

Now, the irony here is that during this time (late eighties into the nineties) Apple was screwing up left, right and center, blowing the opportunities they had. They tried to produce their next generation to Mac OS in-house and failed. Windows 95 came out, their products were expensive yet cheaply built and poorly designed (for the most part). Things got very VERY bleak. It appeared Apple that they would have to buy an OS to adopt for the Macintosh platform. They almost bought BeOS, an excellent OS once again created by a company founded by Jean Louis Gase, a fomer Apple board member -- and the guy said to have tipped Sculley off back in 1985 about the coup. Like Apple and NeXT, Be initially produced the OS and the hardware to run it, eventually going the same route as NeXT by dropping the hardware part. BUT Apple didn't end up buying the BeOS! it was really bizarrre, because I disctinctly remember the December 1996 (fuzzy on the year, but firm on the month) issue of MacWolrd with BeOS on the cover and the headline, "Your next Mac OS". But, at Macworld convention in janury only weeks later, Apple CEO Gilberto Amelio announced that Apple had bought ALL of the NeXT Computer Company: lock, stock... and Steve Jobs. Jobs was brought back as an advisor to the CEO. Six or so months ater, HE became interim CEO and Amelio resigned.

Here are some links to read. Again, there are differing accounts of what happened around hi departure from Apple. Surely others will pipe in about it

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/jobs.htm

http://www.askmen.com/men/apr00/21c_steve_jobs.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...241745,00.html

http://inventors.about.com/library/i...lecomputer.htm

http://www.netvalley.com/intvalnext.html
(this link also credits the first web servers as running on NeXT!)

This is an excellent collection of accounts by people ON THE ORIGINAL MACINTOSH team:
http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?name=Macintosh

rogueToe · Feb 19th, 2005, 11:31 PM

Do a search on Steve Jobs at Amazon.ca. There are many fascinating Jobs biographies and Apple histories. Pretty much any of them will provide you with good reading. The story of Steve Jobs is one of the things that makes Apple so amazing. I recently read Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward, which was published in 1987. The same author apparently has a new book coming out in May called iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. From the blurb: "What a long, strange journey it has been. With the mainstream success of the iPod, Pixar’s string of hits and subsequent divorce from Disney, and Steve’s triumphant return to Apple, his story is better than any fiction." I would agree, except that the "con" of iCon may be inadvertently derogatory ...

capitalK · Feb 20th, 2005, 12:13 AM

Also Gil Amelio wrote an autobiography called "My 500 days at Apple" or something like that. It's a good read, but he's a little full of himself basically saying it's him who saved Apple not Jobs.

Trevor... · Feb 20th, 2005, 12:33 AM

basically, sales of the Mac were terrible, mostly because of its price and a poor compliment of general purpose software.

Strong Apple II sales were the only thing keeping Apple alive at that point,

Steve was basically pretending that the mac was a smash hit and firing people who raised concerns about Mac sales.

John Scully began preparing a plan to restructure Apple, this plan didn't include Steve Jobs.

Jobs began attacking Scully, he had a temper tantrum infront of the board, and he was eventually dismissed from all his responsibilities, and he eventually resigned/fired.

kissenger · Feb 20th, 2005, 02:49 AM

Does Jobs still own Pixar?

autopilot · Feb 20th, 2005, 07:34 AM

from pixar.com:

	Quote:
	Management Pixar's headquarters are in Emeryville, California, and has about 750 employees (as of January 2005). Pixar's Office of the President consists of Steve Jobs, chairman and chief executive officer, Ed Catmull, president, Simon Bax, executive vice president and chief financial officer, John Lasseter, executive vice president of creative, Sarah McArthur, executive vice president, production, and Lois Scali, executive vice president and general counsel.

hey, is sj still technically the "interim" ceo at apple? i think he likes to make a big deal out of that

RobTheGob · Feb 20th, 2005, 09:50 AM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by Macaholic
	Like Apple, they build the hardware (RISC-based -- same processors as Apple's) and the OS, but this time, Jobs went with... wait for it now... open-source BSD UNIX.

Just to be nit-picky, the NeXT machines were all based on CISC processors (68K's, just as Apple's were until 1994). The NeXT machines were one of the first desktop machines to come with a DSP built-in as standard equipment, however...

Macaholic · Feb 20th, 2005, 10:27 AM

That's right! RISC didn't happen until the PPC processors in the early nineties. Didn't they? I knew that; just gettin' old. My apologies.