Everyone knows that when it comes to changing the landscape of innovative tech and gadgetry,
there’s nothing and no one more synonymous to that than tech-giant Apple and its original
CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. Before dictating the evolution of modern technology, Jobs encountered
many challenges along the way. While Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal
computer revolution, not many know that he was forced out of his own company, before
eventually taking it back and leading Apple into the 21st Century.
In this video, we’re taking a look at why Steve Jobs Was Fired From Apple? Before we
jump to it, don’t forget to click the like button, share, subscribe and press the notification
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September 16 is an important day in Steve Jobs life. On September 16, 1985, Steve Jobs
formally quit Apple, tendering his resignation after a power struggle with the company’s
board. On the same day, in 1997, more than a decade later, he would officially rejoin
the company he began, and lead Apple to a new age of dominance in the tech industry.
A dominance that still exists today, thanks to the ingenious perspective of a man with
nothing but great dreams. The name Steve Jobs, after all, is a household
name. You’ve probably seen a couple of his biopics, and know plenty much about his story.
Known to everyone as the co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc, who, along with his buddy Steve
Wozniak, started the company in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple 1 personal computer. The
two would find fame and wealth a year later, with the triumph of the Apple II, an 8-bit
home computer that was one of the world’s first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer
products, and was Apple’s first launch of a personal computer product aimed at a consumer
market, providing access to the technology to American households rather than the usual
office space or for computer hobbyists. Jobs, was known for being an entrepreneur through
and through, and held minimal participation in the design of its earlier products. The
Apple I and the more successful Apple II were designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, while
Steve Jobs participated by overseeing development of its foam-molded plastic case. Jobs however,
had a vision and as a great salesman himself, devised the means to market their products.
Jobs was only 21 when he co-founded Apple, and by the time he was 23, he had already
become a millionaire. But as the years went on, and new products were put forth, the company
would experience some frustrations, leading to many key individuals who were there from
the start of the company to leave it all behind.
In 1983, two years after Apple Computer went public, the company had already cracked the
Fortune 500. At this point, Jobs decided to recruit John Sculley, the head of Pepsi Cola,
to be Apples new Chief Executive, while Jobs remained to be chairman of the board. This
would eventually prove to be Jobs’ initial downfall, as Sculley would take a major role
in the attempt to reorganize Apple and remove plenty of Jobs’ proprietary power. Jobs
was undeniably Apple’s chief visionary, and had quite a different perspective from
the CEO he himself had hired. John Sculley wanted to focus on sales and profits, and
preferred the company to develop more open architecture computers like the Apple II,
which could be sold to sectors of education, small business, and home markets away from
the main competition, IBM’s dominant market of large business structures at the time.
Jobs wanted Apple to focus on closed architecture, instilling plenty of his efforts towards the
development of his own Macintosh division as a business alternative that would directly
compete against the IBM PC. The Macintosh was set to be Apple’s next revolutionary
product, with Jobs taking point over the project. The Mac debuted in 1984, to rave reviews but
disappointing sales, which placed a financial strain on the company, and started the fraying
relationship between Jobs and Sculley. The Jobs and Sculley relationship was strained
even further due to complaints from workers on the Mac team about their demanding boss,
with Jobs endlessly pushing the boundaries as much as he could. After all, that was part
of Jobs’ greatness, to demand so much from the people who worked for him. But oftentimes
he drove people too hard, and being gentle and polite was definitely not part of his
demeanor. By early 1985, the Macintosh’s failure to gain more ground from the IBM PC
became evident, which strengthened Sculley’s position in the company even further. Sculley
would even make a move to reorganize the company, and proposed a plan to the board that would
remove Jobs from his Macintosh division and place him under “New Product Development”.
This move would have effectively rendered Jobs powerless within Apple. A power struggle
erupted between the two, with Jobs conspiring his own means to get rid of the CEO he chose,
but was confronted after the plan was leaked. In the spring of 1985, Apple’s board sided
with John Sculley, removing Jobs from his command of the Macintosh group. A few months
later, Steve Jobs tendered his letter of resignation to the Apple Board, and along with five additional
senior Apple employees, who also resigned to join Jobs in his new venture, the computer
and software company NeXT. During Jobs’ time with NeXT Inc., he would continue to
put out products that were known for its technical strengths through effective object-oriented
software development systems. Jobs ran NeXT with his famous obsession for aesthetic perfection,
a key trait that would serve him much later on. Many actually argue, that the power play
that led to Steve’s departure from Apple provided more general benefits due to the
output Jobs would lead into in those years. Had Steve not been pushed away, he wouldn’t
have developed NeXT, which served as a key component to the development of the world
wide web since the internet’s first prototype was built on a NeXT machine. Much of NeXT’s
technology would also find a way into Apple’s future products, such as its multitasking
operating system NeXTSTEP, which evolved into the Mac OS X. Jobs also used this time to
fund a spin-off group from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division, which would later be Pixar,
the company that has provided us beautiful animated films such as Toy Stories, Finding
Nemo, and so much more. Jobs himself has said in numerous speeches saying, “I didn’t
see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could
have ever happened to me. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my
life”. In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy
NeXT for $427 Million, which brough Jobs back to the company he had cofounded. In 1997,
a party of shareholders sold 1.5 million Apple shares, which caused Apple to lose quite a
lot. At the time, apple saw its worst-ever financial quarter, which led to Jobs serving
as the company’s de facto CEO until it’s then CEO, Gil Amelio left. When Amelio departed,
Jobs stepped into the official role of CEO and would serve the company until his death
in 2011. Under Jobs’ invigorated guidance, the company increased sales, and would introduce
a new wave of products and approaches to marketing that saw the company begin its rise into the
dominant company we see today. From the iMac to the introduction of the iPod, and eventually
the iPhones that captivated the world market, Steve Jobs would eventually bring back Apple’s
efficient productivity, and save the company from the depths of bankruptcy. Through Jobs’
legacy and impact as Apple CEO, the company would eventually make history becoming the
first publicly traded company to achieve a market capitalization of $1 Trillion, proving
that through his visionary leadership, a college dropout can create one of the most powerful
and profitable companies in human history.
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