(This article originally appeared in the Mercury News on June 2, 1985.)
The birthday party was a black-tie affair at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Friends came from as far away as New York City, and Ella Fitzgerald gave one heck of a live performance.
Steve Jobs was turning 30, and an ordinary birthday party wouldn’t do. America’s child prodigy, the brash visionary who was worth $165 million at age 25, was becoming an adult.
Adulthood has proven to be tough on Jobs.
In the three short months since the party at the St. Francis, Apple Computer Inc. has tumbled from being a flamboyant success to being a struggling and troubled computer company. The turmoil — the exodus of key employees, internal rivalries, layoffs and squeezed profits — took their toll on the spirit of co-founder Jobs. On Friday, the bombshell fell on Jobs himself.
As part of a companywide reorganization, the mercurial chairman of the Cupertino company was removed from day-to-day management.
Since early 1981, Jobs (it rhymes with mobs) had nurtured the Macintosh computer from a concept to an important force among personal computers. Jobs’ child suddenly has been swept out of his hands, and the 300-person Macintosh group he managed was swallowed up into Apple’s new structure.
Eccentric leader
A man accustomed to the limelight, an eccentric leader who talks of changing the world and who rubs shoulders with entertainers and politicians, Jobs will have no one reporting to him. Jobs, who sometimes is charming and inspirational and frequently is caustic and arrogant, will be on his own in “a more global role” developing “product innovations and strategies, ” the company says.
Because of Jobs’ temperamental nature, his proven talent for championing radical new ideas and the problems in his Macintosh division, Jobs’ concession to the will of John Sculley was not a surprise to close watchers of Apple.
It was two years ago that Jobs, typically fixated on one goal, spent 4 1/2 months wooing Sculley, a former top executive of Pepsico Inc., to be Apple’s president and chief executive officer. Jobs wanted him so much that Apple paid him more than $2 million.
The two seemed like a perfect couple. Within a year, they talked the same mellowspeak and technobabble. They took walks in the park and did “core dumps” on each other, spilling their thoughts about “insanely great” products, they would say. Sculley, then 44, described theirs as “the best relationship I’ve ever had with anyone since I’ve been working.”
To outsiders, the pairing seemed too good to be true; bets were made on how long it would last.
Within the past few months, “the relationship between Sculley and Steve started to deteriorate, ” says former Apple executive John Couch. “Sculley stopped saying ‘yes’ to him.”
Sculley and Jobs, private people, keep any differences to themselves. Some observers say the two bickered over the design and marketing direction of future computers. Others say that Sculley found Jobs’ ego got in the way of company unity and of negotiations with other computer manufacturers. And, perhaps most important, a brutally honest Jobs lacked the experience and delicate managerial techniques to run a large organization. The current slowdown in the computer market made it especially important to rid Apple of the luxuries (which included company-paid massages) in Jobs’ Macintosh group.
“My impression is Steve Jobs realizes he can’t run a big division. I don’t think he was reading the market right, ” says John Leininger, former manager of industry analysis at Apple. Jobs’ Macintosh, while gaining ground, lacks some of the essential accessories to make it a success in business markets. In addition, Apple seems unable to settle on a solid strategy for battling industry leader IBM.
Friends worried
Whatever the particulars, though, Sculley came out in control, and close friends say they are worried about how Jobs, still Apple’s chairman and largest shareholder, will handle the transition. “His whole life is wrapped up in Apple, ” says Couch.
Jobs reportedly is about to leave for a lengthy business and pleasure trip to Europe, but when he returns he will officially become the “creator of powerful ideas and the champion of Apple’s spirit.”
The fluffy and nebulous description leaves unclear how much Jobs’ influence at Apple was diminished by last week’s reorganization. In order not to lose his grip entirely, Jobs must pursue his love for the bold adventure and the splashy celebration. Since 1976, when he and fellow college dropout Steve Wozniak showed off their simple computer to the Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park, Jobs was the consummate marketer. It was Jobs who convinced “Woz” that they must sell — rather than give away — their circuit boards, Jobs who sold his Volkswagen van for start-up capital and Jobs who signed up consultants for their fledgling company.
It is also Jobs who made the cover of Time magazine at age 26 (and later pouted when Newsweek kept the Macintosh off its front page), while Woz was a hero only to computer hobbyists. It is Jobs who has graduated from Earth Shoes and VWs to bow ties and Mercedes, while Wozniak has spent millions on rock concerts for the masses. It is chairman Jobs, Macintosh in hand, who strides on stage among whoops from thousands of employees at Apple annual meetings, while Wozniak’s former team, the Apple II group, goes almost unnoticed. And it is Jobs who dated folk singer Joan Baez and courted former Gov. Jerry Brown, while Wozniak returned under a pseudonym to student life at Berkeley.
Worldwide reputation
It is also Jobs whose visions and chutzpah helped drive Apple to become a company with $1.5 billion in annual revenues and a worldwide reputation for innovation.
Along the way, Jobs has boosted and bruised more than a few egos.
Tactful he is not. Joe Roebuck, formerly a marketing manager at Apple, remembers when he was the master of ceremonies at a large Apple sales meeting on a beach in Mexico. It was an off day for Roebuck; even he felt he wasn’t being funny. Months later, however, a salesman meeting with Jobs and Roebuck complimented Roebuck’s performance. Roebuck clearly remembers Jobs’ reply: “I think he’s terrible.”
Says Roebuck, Jobs “wouldn’t sugar-coat things.”
More recently, Jobs’ temper surfaced after Wozniak quit Apple in February. To help design his new products, Wozniak called on the same Campbell firm, Frog Design Inc., that had designed the Apple IIc. Jobs rebelled and forced Frog Design to decide betweenApple and Wozniak.
Demanding boss
Few bosses are as demanding or as particular as Apple’s chairman. No detail in product design escapes Jobs’ scrutiny, whether it be the placement of keys or the choice of a sound- producing circuit. The small size and easy-to-use nature of the Macintosh, as well as the automated factory where it is built, are the result of Jobs’ fetishes. He has certain pet peeves: Jobs decreed no Apple computer could contain an internal fan, for example. And he has certain strokes of crazy genius: To memorialize their efforts, Jobs had 47 key Macintosh team members imprint their signatures on the inside of the computer’s case.
Not infrequently, though, Jobs’ intensity pulls him beyond the bounds of normal business etiquette.
Jobs is “24 hours a day Apple, ” says Regis McKenna, public relations consultant to the firm. McKenna should know. More than once, he has been awakened by calls from Jobs, including one from Japan when Jobs became outraged by what he thought was a Macintosh rip-off in that country.
“Working for Steve was like riding backwards on a roller coaster, ” says Taylor Pohlman, who reported to Jobs in 1979 and 1980. “You’re not sure exactly where you’re going, but you’re getting there in a hurry.”
If an employee wins Jobs’ respect, spirits reach a cult- like high. “It is a terrifically exhilarating feeling, and there’s almost nothing you can’t get done, ” Pohlman says. “The Red Sea parts.”
Macintosh elite
Indeed, Jobs looked out for the Macintosh elite. They may have worked 80-hour weeks, but during playtime the close-knit team members enjoyed a stereo system, two video games and a pingpong table, courtesy of their boss.
The favored treatment, however, led to rivalries with the Apple II group, which is responsible for the bulk of the company’s sales and profits.
Still, Jobs’ love for the exotic and daring has made all of Apple an enigma in corporate history. Its bizarre Super Bowl 1984 ad (suggesting IBM as an Orwellian Big Brother), Apple’s “The Kids Can’t Wait” program (Jobs lobbied for tax breaks in exchange for donations of computers to schools) and the company’s insistence on bucking IBM all bear the mark of Jobs’ creativity and passion.
Says a friend, “Steve Jobs’ goal in life (is) to make Apple the greatest corporation in American history.”
For his 30th birthday, Jobs received a gift from McKenna that should remind him how awesome a goal that is. Whether he is Mac manager or corporate visionary, nothing stands more in Jobs’ path than IBM, with its $46 billion in annual revenues and seeming lock on the business computer market.
McKenna gave Jobs one framed share of stock in IBM.
