I was at Apple from 1985 - 1992, and didn't have a meeting with Steve Jobs or John Sculley during that time. I did meet with John Sculley in 1996 when I had my job at Microsoft and we discussed publishing technologies. I still can't remember why or how I got a meeting with John Sculley. Must have been at time when working for Microsoft meant a lot or maybe my job was a bigger deal than I thought. Too long ago. Can't remember. :-)
Forbes just posted a presentation where John Sculley provided a retrospective of what led to Steve Jobs leaving Apple.
John Sculley Just Gave His Most Detailed Account Ever Of How Steve Jobs Got Fired From Apple
Comment NowFollow Comments
After years of silence, former AppleAAPL +1.61% CEO John Sculley has recently been moving more into retrospective mode. On Thursday, Sculley gave perhaps his fullest public account ever of the circumstances surrounding Apple’s firing of Steve Jobs, spending eight extemporaneous and uninterrupted minutes on the most infamous human resource decision in business history.
The video is here.
The video can be seen here:
This article provides the rest of the story of what happened in the Apple Board room.
What happened in the Microsoft Board room when Steve Ballmer was asked to retire? There is no way a Microsoft board members is going to talk to the press. Not unless they want to chance giving up their board seat.
The one area I would disagree with John Sculley is where John says the problem with the original Mac was Moore's Law and processor was not powerful enough. The Mac Plus which came out 2 years later had the same processor, but 1MB instead of 128K, SCSI, and dual sided floppies which gave the IO speed and capacity to do more serious work. The processor was not the problem. But, John may be referring to when the Mac II shipped with a 68020 is when the money really started coming in. My time on the Mac II was some of the funnest times.