2023 Author: Gordon Kinson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-06-04 23:58
This man is known for two facts of his biography. Fact one - John Scully was the head of the famous PepsiCo. Fact two - he fired Apple's founder, Steve Jobs. In a recent interview with BusinessInsider, Scully talks about those times - of course, the truth and only the truth.
Why was Steve Jobs fired from Apple?
According to John, by the mid-1980s, the corporation was having a hard time. The corporation made money on an Apple II computer, but Steve's favorite Macintosh was not doing well. Jobs was extremely disappointed with this circumstance and came up with the following: transfer all the marketing power of Apple to the Macintosh, reduce the price for it to $ 500 (at that time - a lot of money - ed.), And abandon his best-selling computer.
John Scully, who came to Apple then, disagreed. Such actions did not fit into his understanding of business. What was the point in giving up the “goose that lays the golden egg,” he asks? So Scully asked Jobs to speak at the next board meeting and present his positions.
After listening to opponents, the board of directors asked Vice President Mike Markkulu to explore both positions. A week later, Markkula spoke at a regular meeting and said, "I agree with John and disagree with Steve." Upon hearing this, the independent directors asked Jobs to step down as head of the Macintosh division. Even after that, Steve remained on the council. He left the company only five and a half months later. So, Scully points out, he didn't fire Jobs.
However, Scully admits that today he sees Steve's firing as a big mistake. It was impossible to lose the founder of the company, all the more it was impossible to lose the founder of a technology company (this is the specifics of the industry).
Scully on Steve Jobs' principles
Scully notes that he made mistakes, like everyone else, but his phenomenal talent was evident even then. Steve also had successes: he made a successful software company out of the unsuccessful NeXT, and then sold it to Apple for $ 400 million. And Apple must thank him for that - after all, only after this deal did the "apple" corporation get the operating system it deserved.
Both before leaving Apple and after his return, Steve relied on the same thing: detailed product experience, focus on design, desire to make the immediate presence of technology imperceptible. And, of course, “no compromises”.
All Jobs lacked in the 80s was experience
Scully the Apple Destroyer?
… And this is also another myth, says John. Over the 10 years that he worked at Apple, the company's budget grew from $ 800 to $ 8 billion. When Scully left the company (in 1993 - ed.), The Cupertinians already had $ 2 billion in cash for any operations, and she was selling most computers in the world.
The only thing that Scully failed then was the Newton project. The product has not found acceptance in the market. But the technology behind it has remained - for it subsequently did on ARM - processors. And on ARM-processors today, 6 billion devices work - almost as many as there are people on Earth.
And all of these devices could have belonged to Apple:
Scully is happy that Walter Isaacson wrote a book about Steve Jobs - from which, among other things, you can learn that John did not fire Steve. Someday, Scully said, people will see that four years have passed between his departure and the arrival of Jobs (Steve returned to Apple in 1997 - ed.). And all of Apple's problems fell on these four years. Without Steve, but also without John.
See also:
- John Scully: Steve Jobs was thinking about the iPhone back in 1984.
- Shine is an iPhone compatible fitness tracker from John Scully, former Apple CEO.
- John Scully: Tim Cook is on the right track.
- John Scully: In marketing, Apple will outperform any competitor.
