Former Apple CEO John Sculley says he never fired co-founder Steve Jobs - Page 3

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

1) Printing existed before the printing press.

Originally Posted by tjwal

I believe that networked computers have had exactly the same impact as the printing press. The printing press made books available to a much wider audience. It took 3 to 4 centuries before books became available to everyone.

Now it is more than books, Networked computers make video, audio, the performing arts, scientific papers etc. etc. that is available to everyone. It is available instantly, is searchable, and at a cost that is an order of magnitude less than printed material. It has taken only a couple of decades to accomplish this.

Jobs' greatest contribution to all of this was his vision of everyone having a computer. It was his vision of a computer for everyone that started the PC revolution. Without the PC networked computers would probably just belong to Universities and the Military.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

1) Printing existed before the printing press.

2) The wheel is essential to every printing press I've seen. Gears are wheels.

3) You can learn from computers. Inarguably you can learn more from computers than from the printed word due to the many ways in which information can be presented, including being able to interact and get direct feedback, like in this conversation I'm having with someone I've chatted with for years on this site yet no very little about. I don't even know what country you live in.


I honestly don't see how any one can be compared to the other in any real sense as they all build each other.

edit: Yet another way to look at it would be from it's future utility. While I don't think it will go away the printing press is certainly obsolecing due to networked computers which are still increasing. We have bathroom scales that are networked! Until we can talk to each other with our minds I think networked computers will continue, while the printing press seems to be less used each year.

Now take wheel. Certainly used less as digital technology moves to less moving parts, but still used, at least for the cooling fan of this powered technology. We also haw more and more automobiles which are a plethora of wheels, not just on the ones on the ground. Yet I can see how even the wheel in automobiles could become less used as we move to engines with less moving parts, something we have the digital age to thank for.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

Are we on the edge of something similarly important today? Perhaps. The argument in favor is interesting, but in the end, pure guesswork.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

I disagree with your conclusion. If you think the printing press is the most important invention we've discussed there is no quantifiable evidence to say your wrong. I think the wheel is far more important to the world and I'm right from my own PoV. If we hadn't discovered the wheel then we wouldn't have geometry, just like if you didn't understand electricity you won't have the transistor. Mot important is simply not relevant as they are all important to altering how we interact. Bottom line is that we know that the digital age, computer,and Steve Jobs have contributed greatly to the world. Do future generations have to be talking about them in order for their contributions to be valid? Absolutely not. In fact I bet there are pinnacle inventions and people that have shaped this world in ways that we never will consider.

PS: Check out James Burke's Connections series. If you aren't already familiar with them I think you'll enjoy them.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

I'm the last person to not appreciate a Walter Mitty reference, but I'm sorry, I don't get the connection.

Originally Posted by ktappe

OK, so he wasn't officially "fired". But he was demoted, humiliated, and stripped of power to see his visions of the future realized. That's as close to fired as one can get and I don't think any of us can blame him for walking and taking any co-visionaries with him. He was simply too good at what he did not to find a path forward.

Originally Posted by zinfella

IMO, the thread should be called "History, according to Walter Mitty". He is spinning his actions in past events.

Originally Posted by Fake_William_Shatner

I got that as well.

Both Sculley and Jobs are being honest here. But from Jobs point of view, it was a lack of respect from the board.

Sculley on the other hand, looked at this as if he was doing the stockholder's business -- and went to the board. Which I think was wrong -- he didn't respect enough the man who brought him on. Maybe a lot of people would THINK that a company is about the stock -- but I don't think anyone would be calling Sculley to get his help saving a company again.

The ultimate "bad guy" here was the board of directors however -- they shot him in the back and expected that since it wasn't a fatal wound, everything could be fine. Wow.

Originally Posted by zoetmb

He was intelligent and thoughtful, but he still almost killed Apple. During his tenure (and after, until Jobs returned), Apple had a number of serious problems:

- during the early part of Sculley's tenure, they released very few machines in the Mac line: Jobs left in October of 1985, so let's not blame Sculley for 1986. But in 1987, Apple released only an updated version of the Apple IIe and three Macs: a II, II/40MBHD and an SE. In 1988, they released a very slightly enhanced version of the IIc, called the IIc+, which was the very last model in the Apple II line and three new variations on the Mac: a Mac II 40MB with 4MB of memory, an SE with a hard disk and the IIx. In 1989, four more insubstantial variations: SE30, IIcx, IIci and another SE variant. Etc.

- One of the supposed big bone of contentions between Sculley and Jobs was that Jobs wanted to de-emphasize the Apple II line in favor of the Mac. But even under Sculley, the Apple II line only lasted another year.

- In 1993, Sculley's last year, Apple released an incredibly confusing lineup of 26 desktop Macs across five product lines (Mac, LC, Centris, Quadra, Performa) and 6 laptops. This was a huge marketing mistake as the product line was so confusing, even informed consumers had no idea what to buy and what the differences were. It was also Apple's "grey box" era where most of the computers comprised of clunky looking odd shapes.

- Sculley initiated the development of a next-gen operating system, but could never get the team to pull it off, although Sculley's replacements (Spindler, et al) were no better and it wasn't until Apple purchased NeXT that they were able to accomplish OS X. But during this period, Apple kept changing their approach to the next OS, which severely alienated developers and program producers and turned them away from the Mac.

-The Newton was developed under Sculley's tenure. And we all know what a great device that was.

- By the time Steve returned in July of 1997, Apple's finances were in such distress that the company was close to going under. Sculley can't take all the blame because he left four years earlier, but he certainly was part of the problem.

So while most historians of the era praise Jobs for recognizing that he needed an outside, experienced executive to run Apple, they criticized him (in retrospect) for hiring the wrong person and making the hiring decision based upon personality.

As for Sculley, Condé Nast Portfolio ranked Sculley as the 14th worst American CEO of all time. I've met executives like Sculley and they do very well when companies pretty much run themselves and have strong executive teams who actually manage the company, so they can simply act as the figurehead. They don't do well when they have to take an active role and/or when companies have severe strategic problems.

Originally Posted by Alonso Perez

I work in the corporate world and what he says is half true, people get "moved around" all the time.

What he does not mention is that some moves are disguised firings, even though the person is not actually terminated. This is common practice in upper management. The message comes precisely in the form Sculley sent it: the executive is removed from their role, perhaps given some token role with a big name. It's done this way because the overt firing of major executives is an embarrassment to the organization and it looks bad on their CV. Companies (in other words, other executives) give those fired this way the valuable ability to say that they left on their own.

Most executives thus marginalized will leave quietly within a few months, ideally to a job elsewhere. This may have been what Sculley expected, but Jobs was no corporate soldier. He was self-made and full of ideas. He understood he had no future at Apple, and not being one to waste time he left and went to form NeXT.

Sculley is a liar because he understands corporate language perfectly and knows full well what he did to Jobs. Now that this is a liability to him, he uses a technicality to try weasel away from it.

His revenue and market share stats are of little meaning, since the company had huge momentum and no credible competition in the GUI OS space till Windows 3.0 showed up in 1990. It was then that the lack of innovation and vision under Sculley was gradually exposed, and the 90's proceeded to be a big bag of hurt for Apple till Jobs returned.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

You've argued yourself right out of your own premise with this statement, by thinking so much from within your own frame of reference. The printing press was one of the most important factors leading to the end of the Dark Ages and the sparking of the Renaissance, very probably the single most important leap in the history of human culture. The internet-connected computer has a long way to go before it can be shown to have equal importance.

Originally Posted by Flaneur

Shockingly bounded vision exhibited here by yourself, Dr. M., though I agree about the Renaissance.

Simple logic should let you see that each connected computer is not only a printing press but a library that encompasses, or will encompass, all the world's printed materials. Then add sound and picture and moving picture. Then add instant search and indexing. Do I need to go on?

The computer is to the printed book as the printed book is to the hand-lettered papyrus scroll. To think otherwise is perhaps to betray a sentimental over-attachment to a venerable ancestral technology?

We can use another Renaissance, since we're still saddled with the main Creation myths that belonged to the Dark Ages. I think Steve Jobs had a new Enlightenment in mind when he talked about changing the world.

Ps. I'm not one to short sell the effects of the Gutenberg revolution. The book and other forms of print created individualism, authorship, readership, democracy 2.0, along with the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the scientific revolution. But we ain't seen nothing yet. The next revolution, based on having essentially all the world's knowledge past and present in your pocket, could be called the Jobsian revolution in times to come. That's why I think comparisons with Walt Disney, Edison or Ford are too slight and cheap toward what Jobs accomplished.

Originally Posted by Flaneur

To me it is screamingly obvious that a machine that "contains" a billion or so dynamically searchable pieces or volumes of information and/or knowledge, in the hands of hundreds of millions at all times of the day is going to be a quantum leap in both our intellect and sensorium as a species.

Maybe we should try to imagine what is beyond science, which I agree was a very big deal among many other big deals produced by print.

How about global cultural ecumenicalism? World virtual exploration? World social nirvana? The revival of the archaic nature "religions" (they weren't really religions; Robert Graves called them "festal systems")? The end of the Indo-European system of dominance by conquest? The demotion of the Indo-European "Abrahamic" god? The thirteen-moon calendar?

I leave it to your imagination how we build on the galaxy of changes wrought by Gutenberg. I take it you've read the work of the sage of Toronto, Marshall McLuhan. He has a lot to say about the creation of the global village created by electronic media.

I just would like to see the Jobsian contribution framed in a serious way. It's being missed by a wide margin. Almost dismissed, and it's basic media theory

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

I'm not following. I see you made comments about whether the computer age was more important than the printing press, but Woodlink's comments are about Steve Jobs contributions not having any known or measurable level of social contributions.

I can't agree or disagree about the level of important significance something has affected the world but the printing press v computer can easily be argued if you take either side. Taking a position opposite of yours the computer got us to the moon, put giant machines in orbit, and all sorts of other things that connected us to the rest of the world. It's taken what the printing press could do and then made it easier and faster than it ever could been. The point is that it allowed for the automation of the written word (and ideas), which is why you choose this over writing in general, but the computer and internet allow for all this, too, just better and easier.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

I would say digital age over networked computers. That is what sparked everything. It's what led to the transistor and microchip that allowed for these machines to be in our homes and connected to each other.

I wonder how many computers I interact per day. I mean, how many do my computing devices interact with when I do basic tasks like using my phone, doing a google search, reading a Wikipedia page (which includes all that have attributed to the page), and even participating on this forum.

What you ask is hard because the printing press allowed for printed materials about the digital age, so do you count the foundational invention as higher or the newer one if it led to a lot more rapid changes in many more ways?

Admittedly I know very little about the printing press. I don't know if it causes a huge change in metal alloys being created for the press. If it sparked new paper and ink creation, etc. Yet with the digital age I know of many other areas of technology that were directly affected by it in ways that have changed this world forever. We can sequence DNA!

If you want specifically go with networked computers over the digital age because we're going with printing press over writing then I present to artificial satellites. We have giant clocks in space (GPS) that can tell us where we are in long., lat., and height above sea level in seconds. We have others with cameras and sensors that read the earth to detect changes. The idea that we can get images from a camera high above Earth and send them to your TV is impressive and has changed the world.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

1) Printing existed before the printing press.

2) The wheel is essential to every printing press I've seen. Gears are wheels.

3) You can learn from computers. Inarguably you can learn more from computers than from the printed word due to the many ways in which information can be presented, including being able to interact and get direct feedback, like in this conversation I'm having with someone I've chatted with for years on this site yet no very little about. I don't even know what country you live in.


I honestly don't see how any one can be compared to the other in any real sense as they all build each other.

edit: Yet another way to look at it would be from it's future utility. While I don't think it will go away the printing press is certainly obsolecing due to networked computers which are still increasing. We have bathroom scales that are networked! Until we can talk to each other with our minds I think networked computers will continue, while the printing press seems to be less used each year.

Now take wheel. Certainly used less as digital technology moves to less moving parts, but still used, at least for the cooling fan of this powered technology. We also haw more and more automobiles which are a plethora of wheels, not just on the ones on the ground. Yet I can see how even the wheel in automobiles could become less used as we move to engines with less moving parts, something we have the digital age to thank for.

Originally Posted by melgross

But space travel isn't a good example. Even though my background is scientific, and even though I'm a dreamer about this, with over 3,000 science fiction novels in my library. I have to admit, that so far, and of the near future, at least, space travel is a bust. Not the best example. And we got to the moon with primitive mainframes and expensive mini- computers. Not a personal computer in sight.

Originally Posted by melgross

Printing changed everything. And you should really get off your horse about this and acknowledge it.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

You're also discounting all the artificial satellites that we use every single day? None of that is possible without computers.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

Not on a horse. Have acknowledged it. I've also acknowledged how other inventions build upon other inventions which makes saying the wheel is an inferior invention to printing a foolish stance. I clearly stated that don't hold any one of these inventions to be better or worse than the other. I also stated that the computer age has changed the world though I keep getting told "This will be debated forever." when the proof is all around us.

Originally Posted by melgross

We are very specifically talking about connected personal computers and the individual, and how it will change our lives. We're not talking about computer systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

If you want to talk about that, then it's a different conversation, and it hardens back to the days before printing, with the extremely rare and expensive handmade manuscript.

So in a sense, mainframes can be likened to the days before the dissemination of information through society. That's because without personal computers and the Internet, all they would be used for would be major scientific projects, the military, and large governmental work. It wouldn't affect us as consumers of information, or as communicators at all.

Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss

Nobody said that the wheel was an "inferior invention." If you must respond to something I wrote, please respond to something I actually wrote.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

Not on a horse. Have acknowledged it. I've also acknowledged how other inventions build upon other inventions which makes saying the wheel is an inferior invention to printing a foolish stance. I clearly stated that don't hold any one of these inventions to be better or worse than the other. I also stated that the computer age has changed the world though I keep getting told "This will be debated forever." when the proof is all around us.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

Networked computers. With a qualifier on that in the initial post I considered all networked computers. It's easy to say networked PC networked personal computer or simply personal computer. That is not what was said.

I'm still not seeing how 1) Steve Jobs didn't affect the world, 2) networked computers, PCs, or any combination of those terms, didn't affect the world, or 3) how the printing press can be deemed unarguably better than the wheel or networked computers.

Originally Posted by melgross

Not exactly. There were several major inventions through the ages that made us what we are. The most important technical invention was fire, of course. But the spear, the bow and arrow, the stone cutters before even fire, those are all extremely important. We can add the wheel to that, though with a number of major societies, such as those in the mid and southern America's, civilizations grew up to be pretty sophisticated without it.

The written language, after the spoken language, was arguably the MOST important invention of them all, and preceded all the rest. Without spoken language, communication, other than in the most primitive fashion, would be impossible.

So where would you like to begin?

What will be debated forever is whether you contention, which is what I gather from your written words here, is that computers are more important than the printing press was.

Both have ushered in new ages. Which was more important in the long run will be subject to debate. The problem is that later inventions, no matter how important they may be, are almost always dependent on earlier ones. Remember the "on the shoulders of giants" remark.

Originally Posted by melgross

I prefer the term "connected". Networked is so much more limited a concept. People connect, they don't network, even though that term has become popular. I think as people connecting over their computers, such as we are doing. We aren't networking.

Originally Posted by pondosinatra

Why I tend to not post on these forums anymore....

Endless 'debates' between the usual suspects as to who is more correct about (usually) something vaguely related to the news story...

The comic geek from the Simpsons dutifully hammering away on the keyboard to express his indignation comes to mind....

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

Your comment "Even the invention of the wheel arguably isn't as singular in importance [as the printing press]" clearly states the wheel is inferior to the printing press.

Whether there was any wheel used directly with the first printing press I guarantee there were wheels used in other aspects associated with it.

Originally Posted by melgross

You simply can't attribute all of this to Jobs. You really can't! Even though he made major contributions, they all they were. He didn't invent the first 4004, 8008, and 8080 chips that lead to other companies producing microcomputer chips which led to the Altair 8080 and others, before App,e came on the scene. He also didn't invent the Internet, we have the department of defense to thank for that. He didn't invent Pagemaker, or the laser printer, or the 3.5" floppy, or the CD, etc.

He did take advantage of some of that before others did. In doing so, he made plenty of mistakes along the way.

The thing with Jobs, was that he had the smarts and determinations to correct most of his mistakes, and to hire brilliant people around him to do what he couldn't.

But, let's not elevate him to a status he didn't have. In the end, that really just demeans what he did do.

Originally Posted by Black Belt

Expensive, yes, REALLY expensive, but damn good.

Originally Posted by Black Belt

Sculley did do good things at Pepsi and made some very noted improvements in how they did business, but he was an incredibly poor choice and strategy for Apple by a board of buffoons.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

1) You forgot agriculture and animal husbandry. Very important in to that list of early inventions that changed society.

2) Again, my position is and always has been that 1) all these inventions are important, 2) you can't deem one invention more important without it subjective, and 3) The computer age and Steve Jobs have the changed the world and we don't need a thousand years of debate to know that its a fact when the change is around us every day.

Originally Posted by SolipsismX

network (n.) "net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc.," 1550s, from net (n.) + work (n.). Extended sense of "any complex, interlocking system" is from 1839 (originally in reference to transport by rivers, canals, and railways). Meaning "broadcasting system of multiple transmitters" is from 1914; sense of "interconnected group of people" is from 1947. The verb, in reference to computers, is from 1972; in reference to persons, it is attested from 1980s.


Be back later...

Originally Posted by Flaneur

Which is why the better comparison is Jobs to Aldus Manutius, not Gutenberg, as I've said more than once here. Aldus made the book portable and attractive, and recruited the refugees from the fall of Byzantium, and/or a crew of Greek intellectuals he imported to Italy, to provide content for his saddlebag-sized, beautifully produced volumes. He was the engine of the Enlightenment's beginning, building on Gutenberg's "mainframe" books.

He's hardly remembered. I only learned about him through Clay Shirky, via Elizabeth Eisenstein, who relied on Martin Lowry. Jobs may also be similarly disremembered, but that doesn't change the fact that he did the most to humanize the personal computer, make it attractive, and then make it really personal -- you keep it in your pants (Gruber) -- and really attractive.

If we left these things to the Gutenbergs and Microsofts, there would be no revolution, or renaissance, until another Aldus or Jobs came along. Credit where credit is due. And don't forget the production designer, Jony Ive.

Who was Aldus's? Those books were magnificent. That's the other thing Jobs and Ive did -- bring beauty back to technology. Absolutely crucial.

Edit: Aldus is remembered by people more bookish than I've been in my life. I know an Aldine Bookstore in L.A. -- there must be many of those in the world -- and then there is Aldus Pagemaker, named after this founding typographer and publisher. He also invented italic typefaces.

Originally Posted by Black Belt

Sculley did do good things at Pepsi and made some very noted improvements in how they did business, but he was an incredibly poor choice and strategy for Apple by a board of buffoons. He skated along on previous work and eventually ran it right up to the iceberg and Amelio took it the rest of the way. Steve was not a pleasant guy to work for, being referred to as "The monster" when he left. But I think he was manically insane because he wanted Apple to be insanely great. And you go apeshit when your company is being dragged down a hole by it's employees. I think Sculley's backtracking is bullshit. He whined to the Board and got his way, and Apple took it in the shorts and he went home. Sorry, but whether he uttered a "Trumpian" - YOU'RE FIRED, or not, is irrelevant to the situation. Steve was fired, disrespected by a board of buffoons and had little choice for a shred of dignity to leave his lifelong work. Maybe it was kharma for his disagreements with Woz, who knows.

Steve brought Apple back from the brink by sheer fucking will. Bill Gates even stepped up with Microsoft's checkbook because he knew the kind of investment Steve was. I was a Mac guy since the Mac Plus and rode it downhill until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I switched to PC. I swore I was done. But now I am looking at a goddamn MacBook Pro because they are so good. Expensive, yes, REALLY expensive, but damn good.