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Time Machines: Apple's attempt to sell the future at CES
Welcome to Time Machines, where we offer up a selection of mechanical oddities, milestone gadgets and unique inventions to test out your tech-history skills. In the weeks leading up to the biggest gadget show on Earth, we'll be offering a special look at relics from CES' past. In the early '90s, Apple CEO John Sculley filled his CES keynote with a sweeping premonition on how computers and consumer electronics would soon merge into tiny, do-everything devices. When he finally took the idea to market, it was innovative, ahead of its time and ultimately disappointing. There's more to the story, though, and it's all waiting for you after the break.
Apples to BlackBerrys: John Sculley reportedly considering bid for failing phone maker
For anyone who has followed Apple's history, John Sculley is a familiar figure. He was the CEO who famously ousted Steve Jobs from the company he co-founded in 1985; he championed the ill-fated Newton; and he eventually left Apple as its profits turned to losses in 1993. Yesterday afternoon, The Globe and Mail published a report that has the potential to change that legacy. According to the piece by Steven Chase and Iain Marlow, the man who fired Steve Jobs is considering a bid for BlackBerry.
Daily Update for October 11, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Former Apple CEO John Sculley: Tim Cook doing a terrific job
Former Apple CEO John Sculley recently told CNBC Asia that he thinks Tim Cook is doing a fine job. "I think Cook is doing a terrific job. He's not trying to be Steve Jobs; only one person could be Steve Jobs and that was Steve," he said. Sculley was the CEO of Apple from 1983-1993 and Jobs' initial successor, once Jobs was ousted from the company. Many believe that Sculley fired Jobs in 1983, which he denies. "I was never the person who fired Jobs, that was a myth," he said. Today, Sculley has praise for Cook and Apple's current lineup of products: "Steve could make the big creative leaps. What Tim is doing is continuing the Apple philosophy of no compromise and quality of their products and great styling. I think people are giving Apple a bum rap on what is still a great company with great products," he said.
Jobs was interested in the phone industry as early as the 80's
Former Apple CEO John Sculley spoke recently during Young Turks Conclave 2013 and shared his thoughts on Steve Jobs, Apple's future and India's entrepreneurs. His conversation was reprinted by YourStory.in, a website dedicated to India's startup scene. Speaking about Steve Jobs, Sculley shared that He and Jobs were working on Mac phones as early as 1984. "I remember we were working on Mac phones back in late 1984. Steve was thinking about those kinds of products back then. He used to say, the most important things are not the things you build but also the things you don't build. He was rigorous in the discipline of simplifying." As noted by The Mac Observer, these phones likely were not mobile phones like the iPhone, but a Mac-based landline phones. It probably was an idea hatched by engineers at Apple and eventually killed by Jobs Many of Jobs' visions for Apple continue today under the leadership of Tim Cook. Cook, Sculley believes, will lead Apple into the next game-changing product, which will likely involve televisions or wearable technology. "Apple is like BMW, and BMW doesn't compete with the lowest price brands. I think Apple will do just fine. Tim Cook has done a terrific job of setting up the stage for some exciting products next year. I don't think there would be a creative leap in the smartphone industry, and the industry is maturing and is stabilizing right now. But I am sure we will see a creative leap from Apple maybe a TV or a wearable." Sculley also shares some anecdotal stories about the friendly, yet competitive relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Sculley's comments on YourStory.in are worth a read for those interested in Apple history. [Via The Mac Observer]
Daily Update for January 16, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
John Sculley: Apple needs a cheap iPhone
Former Apple CEO John Sculley says Apple must make a cheap iPhone to tackle emerging markets. The CEO who ran Apple into the ground in the 1990s made the comments on a Bloomberg Television interview from Singapore. The comments come after AAPL sunk to below US$500 a share yesterday -- the lowest its been in 11 months (although there may be some shady reasons behind the stock fall). Sculley said, "Apple needs to adapt to a very different world. As we go from $500 smartphones to even as low, for some companies, as $100 for a smartphone, you've got to dramatically rethink the supply chain and how you can make these products and do it profitably." Noting that there was "nothing wrong" with the current iPhone, Sculley however said that Samsung has become "an extraordinarily good competitor" and the differences between its devices and Apple's aren't as wide as they used to be. Sculley didn't say whether he thought the US and Europe needed a cheap iPhone, but he sees it as essential in economies such as India, South America, Russia, China, Africa and other parts of Asia. He also said that because of Tim Cook's supply chain expertise and Apple's apparent choices recently to improve update cycles from 12 months to six months, Apple's current CEO is "exactly the right leader" for Apple at this time.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley: Apple is well-run
Although Tim Cook has been at Apple's helm for a while now, concern over his long-term guidance continues to permeate opinions of both shareholders and analysts. For his part, former Apple CEO, John Sculley, is confident in Apple's management. The Motley Fool reports that during a recent interview with CNBC, Sculley was very upbeat about the future of his former company. "I think they're going through a very significant change now in terms of product cycles," Sculley explains. "Traditionally Apple introduces products once a year; now it's really introducing products twice a year. The complexity of that from a supply chain is immense, and Apple seems to be doing it well. So, I think that people are underestimating just how well Apple is run, and just how successful the company can be when it gets to that twice-a-year product introduction cycle." Sculley went on to note that he believes Apple's valuation should remain relatively constant despite the change in leadership, mentioning that product guru Jony Ive brings a lot to the table. Whether investors see it the same way is an entirely different story, and while some analysts consider whether Apple's valuation deserves the so-called "Steve Jobs premium" it once had, the company has its work cut out for it to calm the fears of Wall Street.
John Sculley discusses ARM and the Newton
One of the products often pointed out as the sterling example of an Apple failure is the Newton MessagePad. The product, which launched in 1993 only to be axed in 1998 by the newly returned Steve Jobs, was ahead of its time in many ways. The man who took the project under his tutelage in the early 1990s was then-CEO John Sculley, who recently spoke at a South Florida Technology Alliance event about the Newton and the ARM processor that powered it. According to Sculley, the handwriting recognition capabilities of the Newton were never meant to define the device. Instead, "It was really much more about the fact that you could hold this thing in your hand and it would do a lot of the graphics that you would see on the Macintosh." There was no microprocessor available at the time that would let Apple do graphics-based software, so Newton project lead Larry Tesler came up with the idea of having Apple design its own microprocessor. The result was the ARM processor, a joint venture between Apple, VLSI, and Acorn Computers. The processor not only provided the functionality required for Newton, but was also power efficient. Without the ARM processor, the iPhone might never have taken off -- every iPhone uses a derivative of the ARM core used in the Newton. Sculley's talk is included in the video embedded below. Especially interesting is his comment about foreseeing mobile computing as a multi-billion dollar business -- something he was ridiculed for in the early 1990's.
Stanford archives provide rare glimpse into Apple's early days as mere seedling (video)
Housed in a climate controlled storage facility operated by Stanford University, nearly 600 feet of shelf space is dedicated to preserve documents, videos and memorabilia of Apple and its early days as a young startup. The collection holds rare gems such as interviews with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both of whom discuss some of the rationale behind Apple's name -- Jobs asserts that it was selected to place his company ahead of Atari in the phone book. Originally intended to furnish Apple's corporate museum, the materials were donated to Stanford in 1997 after Steve Jobs' return to the company, which was most concerned with financial survival at the time. According to the university, more than 20 significant collections have been added to the archives in the subsequent years. The warehouse holds blueprints of the Apple I, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials and T-shirts, along with thousands of photographs that document Steve Jobs during his years as CEO of NeXT. Other rarities include a $5,000 loan document -- signed by the two Steve's and the partnership's third co-founder, Ron Wayne -- a spoof of Ghostbusters that starred former CEO John Sculley and other company leaders, who played "Blue Busters" to eliminate IBM, and handwritten sales entries of the very first Apple II's. While the location of the facility is undisclosed, we can only hope that, some day, the collection will be showcased for fanboys, fangirls and the public alike.
Steve Jobs's story of the stones
Next week, Landmark Theaters in 19 US cities will screen a 70-minute "lost interview" featuring Steve Jobs. The interview was done in 1996 by Robert X. Cringely for his PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds" and is being released in unedited form as Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, writing for Fortune, said that his favorite section of the interview is when Jobs answers the question "What's important to you in the development of a product?". His response features a scathing blow to John Sculley -- "John Sculley got a very serious disease. It's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work" -- as well as a sweet parable about the process of designing a product. In the interview, Jobs reminisces about an old man who lived down the street when he was a young boy. The man showed him a rock tumbler, and he and Jobs went out and got a handful of plain old rocks, then put them into the can with liquid and grit powder. They closed up the rock tumbler, turned it on, and then the man told Jobs to "come back tomorrow." The next day, the man opened the can and inside were these "amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in through rubbing against each other like this (clapping his hands), creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks." Jobs goes on to say how that is a "metaphor for a team that is working really hard on something they're passionate about. It's that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these beautiful stones." The interview will only be shown for two days in the US, so be sure to get your pre-sale tickets now. The theatrical trailer for the interview can be viewed below.
Hired at 14 by Apple
There's a story that was published almost two years ago by programmer Derek Sivers that is worth repeating now, especially for those of us who are depressed by the job market. Indeed, that's why Sivers originally penned his story two years ago: to show that persistence and a little knowledge can pay off big. The story is about the time Apple hired a fourteen year old kid named Tom Williams. Williams was a boy from Victoria, Canada who worshiped former Apple CEO John Sculley. As a young teen, through necessity, Williams started his own software company called Desert Island Software, but his real goal was to meet John Sculley and get hired by Apple. So starting at the age of twelve Williams started calling John Sculley's assistant every morning for a year and a half. Talk about persistence. That eventually led Apple to invite the boy down to Cupertino for the 1993 WWDC. There, Williams was promised five minutes with Sculley. That five minutes turned into half an hour and Sculley was only pulled away because he needed to walk onstage to introduce the Newton. But that brief period with Sculley impressed some people at Apple so much that just a year later, Apple hired the fourteen year-old Williams. Tom Williams' story is a great one that teaches what perseverance can accomplish, but it's also got some interesting gems in it, like how Apple got around child labor laws by hiring the fourteen year old as a consultant contracted by Apple through a Canadian company. That way the Canadian company was responsible for any child labor issues. Click on over to Derek Sivers site to read the whole story, as told by Tom Williams.
John Sculley discusses time at Apple, Steve Jobs
Retired professional athletes often reflect on the glory days and those moments when they were at the top of their game. For ousted corporate CEOs, apparently your time in the past with a company that is now flying high is cause for reflection. At least that's the case with former Apple CEO John Sculley (at right in the photo above), who waxed nostalgic for the good old days at Apple as part of an executive speaker series at the Hult International Business School in London last night. Sculley is best known as being hand-picked by Steve Jobs to be the CEO of Apple during the critical years when the Mac was developed and introduced. Formerly the president of PepsiCo, Sculley ran Apple between 1983 and 1993. Although the company's revenues increased from $800 million to $8 billion in those 10 years, Sculley was eventually replaced by the Apple board of directors as margins and stock price declined. Thanks to his awesome leadership at Apple, both Business Insider and Portfolio Magazine would add Sculley to their "Worst American CEO" lists. But that hasn't tarnished Sculley's fond memories of Apple. At last night's talk, he discussed the differences between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (mainly the fact that Steve is all about the design excellence, while Bill was "all about landgrab" and "built this entire company Microsoft around shrink wrapped software."), why Jobs hired him in the first place (Sculley wanted to "sell the experience of a lifestyle" as he did at Pepsi), and lauds Steve Jobs as being the "one person" who launched the mobile era. The last statement is fine praise indeed from Sculley, who was known for spearheading the ill-fated -- but groundbreaking -- Apple Newton MessagePad during his reign. Electricpig UK was in attendance at the talk and has more details of last night's event here.
John Sculley gives an epic interview, says he was the wrong choice for Apple CEO
Comfy? Good. John Sculley has given one beast of an interview to Cult of Mac, and it's all about Steve Jobs. It's a follow-up of a sort to the candid words Sculley gave The Daily Beast in June, where he talked about how he wished things had worked out differently between him and Steve. In this new interview Sculley takes it all a step (and several thousand words) further, talking about the genius of Steve Jobs with obvious admiration. In fact, Sculley says that after Steve was ousted he basically attempted to run the company within the template for design and innovation that Steve had set down, and that Steve merely returned the company to his own original model when he came back in 1997. Outside of the very interesting examination of Steve's methods and talent, Sculley offers a multitude of tidbits. One particularly interesting story is of the Newton, which Sculley says actually saved the company from going bankrupt. Apple owned a 47 percent stake in the fledgling company that build the ARM processor for the first Newton, and when finances got tough Apple got $800 million out of selling its stake -- which easily offset the $100 million Apple "burned" on building the Newton. Of course that stake would be worth billions today, but let's not dwell on the past. We won't spoil any more of the interview for you, just hit up the source link and enjoy!
John Sculley on Steve Jobs' guiding principles
In an unprecedented interview, former Apple CEO John Sculley discusses his relationship, past and present, with Steve Jobs. Initially pulled from Pepsi Co. by Steve Jobs in 1983, Sculley ran Apple with Jobs until Jobs was ousted in 1985. Sculley then ran Apple as the sole CEO until 1993. In the interview with Cult of Mac, Sculley notes that he isn't in contact with Jobs anymore, and he considers his time at Apple "ancient history." Still, Sculley went on to describe what he called Steve's methodology for building great products, which includes: Beautiful design (no surprises there) Customer experience Perfectionism Minimalism Again, there's not a surprise among the bunch, and John elaborates on these and other aspects of Steve's drive in the full interview. Sculley also goes on to note that it was "...a mistake" to make him CEO: "Looking back, it was a big mistake that I was ever hired as CEO. I was not the first choice that Steve wanted to be the CEO. He was the first choice, but the board wasn't prepared to make him CEO when he was 25, 26 years old." The whole interview is broken into several parts, starting here. It's candid and, as we said, unprecedented. Go and read it for a unique look at a significant figure in Apple history.
John Sculley looks back on firing Steve Jobs: 'I have tremendous admiration for him'
The boardroom showdown that ousted Steve Jobs from Apple's executive offices in the heady days of the mid-80's is the stuff of legend. The Daily Beast tracked down his replacement -- John Sculley, the man behind the Newton -- for a chat on the events that led up to Jobs' departure, and what's happened (or hasn't happened) since. Check it out. [Image via Mac History]
