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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]
The Apple tablet that wasn't
TechCrunch has posted pictures of what they're calling an "unlaunched Apple tablet." In 1990, as the story goes, Apple was supposedly working on a pen-based touchscreen tablet called the Pen Mac that was actually extremely small for the time -- just about an inch thick, with a screen the same size as a Mac Portable. They were bringing a few different companies in on the deal, and apparently it worked well -- ran a full Mac OS, used a pen to control or let you plug in a mouse and keyboard, and there was even a smaller version called the PenLite (bulky by today's standards, but remember that this is 20 years ago now). So why weren't we all using tablet computers 20 years ago? TechCrunch blames John Sculley, who apparently thought the tablet idea was out, and the PDA idea was in, and we ended up with the Newton instead. I won't second guess him -- while it's easy to think that anything could have beaten the Newton, would the current Apple touchscreen tablet craze even be here if it weren't for the iPhone? And isn't Apple's smartphone just a hop, skip and a jump from their original PDA?
