Former Apple CEO John Sculley Reflects on Steve Jobs

[rikers_mailbox]

Huh? I would rather give that credit to Steve Wozniak, Sir Clive Sinclair, Ed Roberts and a few others who were engineers who actually CREATED computers - and who were already doing it before Steve Jobs even entered the field.

You're missing the point. Job's didn't invent computing; no one is claiming he did. What he did was elevate computing from huge, cumbersome boxes and text-based command line interfaces to something the average person could use. He designed and brought to market a personal computer that was accessible to the average consumer (aka 'idiot').

Ford didn't invent the car. Heck, Ford didn't even make the BEST car (are Apple computers the best?). Ford figured out a way to build automobiles for the masses. Jobs at least deserves the same recognition for personal computing.

 

[rikers_mailbox]

Good God, I thought these kind of absolutely false, clueless idiocies died out by now... apparently there you are, still believing this utter ************* Apple was busy spreading in the 90s.

Newsflash for you: Jobs didn't create jacksheet, especially not personal computing and Apple so far never invented anything - they always take existing bits and pieces and make them into a very easy-to-use UI/user experience.

If anything they are usually very late to the game because of this business model.

And what sort of propaganda do you believe in?

To say that "Apple so far never invented anything" is patently false.

 

[eleven59]

does anyone think young steve jobs actually look a bit like tom cruise?

beat me too it... but yeah

 

[Pilgrim1099]

Commodore goodness

I grew up with the c-64 and 128 years ago. For those who miss the glory days of the computer, it has returned

http://www.commodoreusa.net/Home.html

 

[twoodcc]

a nice read. steve jobs' story is truly remarkable

 

[kdarling]

Steve has great vision and great taste. But this doesn't make him infallible or an engineer or a usability PhD. So when he is wrong, bad things can happen -- and I am sure he ignored his engineers who told him why you need a fan inside a box with a 68000 chip, motherboard and a CRT (!).

One thing that a lot of Apple fans don't seem to realize, is that Jobs is not an engineer, nor a programmer, nor even a designer. He's also generally considerd bad at people and project management, and always has been.

What he IS good at, is knowing how to hire people who are good at those things, how to hack away unnecessary (to him, at least) bits, and how to sell the resulting device.

You're missing the point. Job's didn't invent computing; no one is claiming he did. What he did was elevate computing from huge, cumbersome boxes and text-based command line interfaces to something the average person could use. He designed and brought to market a personal computer that was accessible to the average consumer (aka 'idiot').

Wozniak did the engineering; Jobs came up with the idea of a pretty box.

It wasn't the first such box and it sure wasn't priced well for the average consumer.

Commodore had their PET and Tandy their TRS-80 at the same time, and both of those way outsold the very expensive Apple II.

 

[rikers_mailbox]

Wozniak did the designing; Jobs came up with the idea of a pretty box.

And it wasn't the first such box. Commodore had their PET and Tandy their TRS-80 at the same time, and both of those way outsold the horribly expensive Apple II, as they were priced "for the rest of us".

As a Device and UI engineer of 30 years, who writes the requirements that you build to? Do you give them any credit for your work?

 

[Compile 'em all]

One thing that a lot of Apple fans don't seem to realize, is that Jobs is not an engineer, nor a programmer, nor even a designer. He's also generally considerd bad at people and project management, and always has been.

What he IS good at, is knowing how to hire people who are good at those things, how to hack away unnecessary (to him, at least) bits, and how to sell the resulting device.

Right, so Steve Jobs just hired people and left and they came up with all those great products in the past 10 years.

Steve Jobs is a Class A visionary. This is almost always the most important part of product development. You make it sound like Jobs just hired some brilliant guys and that's it. Microsoft employs brilliant people and they do have excellent designers. HP employs brilliant people and they do have excellent designers. What is the difference between MS and Apple? It is not a talent or money problem.

Think about it...

 

[kdarling]

As a Device and UI engineer of 30 years, who writes the requirements that you build to? Do you give them any credit for your work?

What "requirements" are you talking about in this case? To look pretty?

Wozniak added the keyboard, integrated the display, and came up with most of the firmware on his own.

Jobs' primary contribution was to decide that they should use an integrated keyboard case similar to HP desktop devices of the time (I have some nice old HPs like that) instead of metal boxes.

So did Commodore. So did Tandy. So did Atari a little later on. So did at least a dozen other home computer contenders. It was a natural design progression.

Anyone who lived through the period knows that the Apple II did not start the PC revolution, nor was it affordable for the masses.

Like others here, I lived through it. I still have a complete collection of BYTE, Microcomputing, Dr Dobbs and other magazines. I handwired my first computer from a 6800 and 256 bytes of RAM. I used to compile assembler in my head.

Right, so Steve Jobs just hired people and left and they came up with all those great products in the past 10 years. .

I didn't say that; you did. I said he knows how to hire people who can do great design. He gives them a vague idea, they run with it, he helps hone it according to what he thinks will sell. It's a great talent, but it's not a standalone talent.

Personally, I'm a great admirer of his dog & pony show talents. He's excellent at phrasing things in such a way that people think he actually said (and did) more.

On the other hand, I've rarely seen him give any credit to others.

 

[firewood]

Macintosh 128k, macintosh 512k, G4 Cube.

Basically Steve hated the concept of having a fan in the computer and he always tried to do without one. Give the heat generated from modern chipsets, its now impossible to build a computer without a fan, unless you want to embrace liquid cooling

A4 chipset. Runs at 1 GHz in the iPad. No fan or liquid cooling needed.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Right, so Steve Jobs just hired people and left and they came up with all those great products in the past 10 years.

Steve Jobs is a Class A visionary. This is almost always the most important part of product development. You make it sound like Jobs just hired some brilliant guys and that's it. Microsoft employs brilliant people and they do have excellent designers. HP employs brilliant people and they do have excellent designers. What is the difference between MS and Apple? It is not a talent or money problem.

Think about it...

Steve is amazing with his vision and getting to it regardless of what stands in his way. I think what a lot of people try to point out though is that Steve is not anything but the man with the vision and the man putting the people in place to carry that out. For that hes damn good but he is not the brilliant mind making it happen. Never has been and never will be. Steves vision is amazing though.

 

[firewood]

2. Apple "PAID" for access to the research at Xerox Parc and probably would have paid licensing fees but Xerox considered GUIs a dead end area of research. 1981
...
4. MSFT received a prototype of the Lisa. 1982
5. MSFT received a prototype of Macintosh 1983

Xerox probably made more off of the Apple stock they got than they ever did from their own products using their GUI.

Bill Gates saw prototypes of the Mac well before 1983. He even bragged that he gave suggestions for improving the GUI (at which the Mac software team laughed).

 

[firewood]

I think it was John Sculley who licensed the graphical interface to Bill Gates. Freeing windows from the command line input. Sculley was such a visionary. Maybe he should have kept selling sugar water.

The licensing was done well before Scully was hired. Talks about MS doing Word for the Mac, which led to the GUI licensing, started in 1982.

 

[Powerbooky]

If you get a chance, read Sculley's book, "Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple...a Journey of Adventure, Ideas & the Future". It was written when he was still at Apple I think but after Jobs was forced out. In the book he credits himself for saving Apple (remember, this was before the company's collapse).

IMO this is what most good companies suffer from in the last 25 years; CEO's who totally have no clue what the company is actually doing or what it is about. And because of this they completely ruin the company in just a couple of years and ... still... credit themselves for doing a good job.

 

[firewood]

For the most part, they are. Let's face it, most people have no idea what they want. If you work with people on design and stuff then you'd know. Leaving a lot of decisions up to the masses is a spell for disaster.

Henry Ford said that if he asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse".

Same here on MacRumors:

"iPod? No way, I want something with more PCI slots. iPhone? No way, I want an iPod with more GB. iPad? No way, I want a netbook with more GHz. etc. etc."

Read and weep.

True genius is realizing that what your buddies want is just a faster horse, and not building what they want, but building what they will want to buy instead of that faster horse a couple years from now.

 

[heavensblade23]

Marketing does not create insanely great products. They make people AWARE of them. But awareness alone does not make them great. Features, aesthetics and ease of use make great products--and the ability to differentiate that set from what everyone else has. Great products have failed because of lack of awareness; Apple takes no chances with that.

It's more than that, people listen to you if you're cool. Steve Jobs may be a smart guy, but if Apple wasn't a desirable brand he wouldn't have the clout to tell people what they want instead of asking them.

Of course, part of being cool is being able to see where things are going and getting there first....

Marketing doesn't have to do so much with informing the consumer as shaping desires and perceptions.

 

[kdarling]

Xerox probably made more off of the Apple stock they got than they ever did from their own products using their GUI.

You made me curious, so I dug around.

Xerox paid $1.5 million for 100,000 shares of Apple stock in August 1979. It split, and they sold 800,000 shares in Oct 1981 for $6,776,000, for a profit of ~$5.2 million.

Xerox sold 25,000 of their 1981 Star graphical microcomputers at over $16,000 each, for a total of $400 million, profit unknown.

See the Star GUI here.

 

[moderately]

It's more than that, people listen to you if you're cool. Steve Jobs may be a smart guy, but if Apple wasn't a desirable brand he wouldn't have the clout to tell people what they want instead of asking them.

There is this cart/horse thing going on here. I think we can credit Jobs with doing a lot to make Apple that desirable brand. How did he do that?

When someone has vision that is no guarantee that what they see will be embraced by all. Failure comes with the territory. The cube g4, the round mouse, etc. these are part of the price we pay for when that vision really does pay out. Seems fair enough.

 

[gettysburg11s]

interesting!

The full interview with John Sculley was fascinating. It really offers great insight into Steve Job's thought processes. I am surprised that Mr. Sculley would admit all this, but I guess its so far removed from current that it doesn't matter anymore. I believe though, that everything happens for a reason. It could be said that Apple's current market position wouldn't have happened without the previous chain of events. So, really, it wasn't a mistake to hire John Sculley.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

The full interview with John Sculley was fascinating. It really offers great insight into Steve Job's thought processes. I am surprised that Mr. Sculley would admit all this, but I guess its so far removed from current that it doesn't matter anymore. I believe though, that everything happens for a reason. It could be said that Apple's current market position wouldn't have happened without the previous chain of events. So, really, it wasn't a mistake to hire John Sculley.

Sculley did what he could with what he had at the time. People tend to forget how polarizing Steve can be and how segregated Apple as a company was at the time.

 

[Drag'nGT]

Sculley reminds me of the guy that does the PS3 commercials.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Sculley reminds me of the guy that does the PS3 commercials.

lol me too.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I think this article is still spot-on with Jobs today. It explains why Jobs refuses to hire more people so that the Mac and iOS devices don't compete with each other for programming time to stay state-of-the-art. It also shows why Apple is doomed in the long run. You cannot possibly maintain two separate lines of devices to be ahead of everyone else if you're only focusing on each on every other year and won't hire enough people (or more specifically Jobs won't allow someone else to be in charge of the other group and must do it all himself which he simply cannot do) in order to achieve it. Thus, I think iOS will eventually be Apple's undoing for one or the other or even both unless Steve retires (unlikely given his need to control everything) or until his eventual earthly demise. I can't help but notice the improvements made in certain areas while Steve was out on medical leave. The Mac Mini actually got real improvements without being made yet smaller and even less expandable (we all know Steve is literally obsessed with small and especially thin even when it makes no sense as is the case (literally the case) with the Mac Mini.

It would be really nice if Steve could get some counseling and let go of the Mac. He's clearly more interested in iOS devices and clearly cannot keep Macs ahead of the game these days. The Mac needs someone else in charge. The Mac should be state-of-the-art, not just thin and pretty and basically a giant iPod Touch with reflections blinding you in the name of 'wow' colors and expansion ports removed for SD ports on "pro" machines, etc. The OS is lagging light years behind in the 3D support environment and OpenGL is ancient on the Mac. Steve was OK with licensing Exchange from Microsoft. Too bad he doesn't license DirectX, at least for gaming sake (oh that's right; he hates gaming so it's OK).

 

[Mal67]

I grew up with the c-64 and 128 years ago. For those who miss the glory days of the computer, it has returned

http://www.commodoreusa.net/Home.html

Holy smoke!
I like that Amiga drawing. I am almost tempted to go for that updated 64 style cased system. But unless these are affordable and get out into lots of different shops I can't see this being very successful at all. Good luck to them though.
Are you keeping up with the commodore because the commodore is keeping up with you......

 

[skunk]

It also shows why Apple is doomed in the long run.

"Beleaguered", don't you mean?