Steve Jobs is no longer the man who spent the longest time as Apple CEO. Tim Cook, the executive currently in charge, has now surpassed Jobs’ record of 4,249 days with that title, making him officially Apple’s longest-serving CEO.
But it turns out the calculation isn’t that simple. Steve Jobs spent several additional years in charge of Apple. He just wasn’t officially “Apple CEO” at the time.
An incredibly rare Apple VideoPad 2 prototype is headed to auction after it was purchased from an Apple engineer back in 1999. It comes with a black leather carrying case that features the Newton logo, and is expected to fetch $12,000.
The VideoPad, which was scrapped by Steve Jobs upon his return to Apple in 1997, was a personal digital assistant (PDA) similar to the Newton that would have allowed users to carry out video calls. But it never made it to market.
Long before Tim Cook brought his operations wizardry to Apple, Del Yocam lent his logistical prowess to Cupertino. Apple’s first chief operating officer, he helped transform the company from a chaotic, scrappy startup into a streamlined manufacturing powerhouse.
He also served as an early mentor to Steve Jobs, the young Apple co-founder who sometimes seemed out of his depth in 1979.
“When I first got to know him, he was lost,” Yocam told Cult of Mac. “He was no longer involved in the Apple II and no one wanted him around, especially management. He didn’t care about money at that time. He was like an orphan, living away from home.”
In many ways, Yocam was the proto-Tim Cook, a manufacturing and operations specialist who helped transform a dysfunctional startup into a massive, moneymaking leader of the early PC industry. He also helped take the rapidly growing company international.
Yocam deserves more credit for helping build Apple than history has so far accorded him. He was one of the main players at a crucial point in Cupertino’s history.
Yocam, now 76, recently talked with Cult of Mac about Apple’s early days. In this exclusive interview, he discusses his friendship and working relationship with Jobs, Apple’s challenging, fascinating, and sometimes malodorous co-founder.
He also reveals new details about Jobs’ tearful ouster from Apple — and how Jobs later offered him an amazing job, only to revoke it at the last moment.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley agrees with Tim Cook that healthcare is a great area for Apple to move into. It may even, he suggests, “be the great legacy that [Cook is] talking about.”
Tim Cook recently made the comments about health in an interview with CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer. He said that health services may wind up being, “Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind.”
You probably don’t know the name Gerry Roche, but he was heavily involved in one of the most significant events in Apple history.
Roche, who died over the weekend at the age of 87, was the executive recruiter who brought John Sculley from PepsiCo to Apple in the early 1980s. Sculley wound up overseeing a massive boom in Apple’s business, the launch of the Macintosh, and — perhaps most memorably — the departure of Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs’ unmatched passion for Apple is what made him one of the world’s best recruiters, says former Apple CEO John Sculley.
The late Apple co-founder was notorious for his ability to organize a team of A players. According to Sculley, that’s because Jobs never let failure trip him up.
Among questions on his favorite sandwiches (“Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger”) and whether he can still jump over a chair (probably not), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates got asked whether his company had copied Steve Jobs during a Reddit Q&A on Monday.
Gates denied copying Cupertino — but reminded everybody that Microsoft and Apple both borrowed liberally from another Silicon Valley pioneer.
Even a year on from its launch, former Apple CEO John Sculley isn’t convinced the Apple Watch is a must-have Apple device just yet.
“I think the Apple Watch is beautiful, but it doesn’t have enough utility to be something that I feel I have to have at this point in time,” he says in a new interview with The Street, noting that it’s the only major Apple product he doesn’t use.
John Sculley may be best known to a generation of Apple fans as the CEO who made the company choose between him and Steve Jobs. But he’s also a successful investor, mentor and entrepreneur — as well as the person who increased Apple’s sales from $800 million to $8 billion during his decade at the top.
In an interview with Cult of Mac, Sculley, who ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, tells why he doesn’t wear an Apple Watch, makes the case that AAPL stock is undervalued, explains how the Steve Jobs movie twisted facts, and talks about his new book Moonshot and the future of entrepreneurism.
There are plenty of opposing views about how Apple should handle the FBI’s demand to create a backdoor to unlock a dead terrorist’s iPhone.
One idea we haven’t heard before, however, is a concept put forward by former Apple CEO John Sculley: Cupertino could help provide the desired information, but Apple (not the government) could be in charge of reading the messages.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley says the new Steve Jobs movie is “extraordinary entertainment,” and thinks it will be “every bit as successful” as Aaron Sorkin’s previous Silicon Valley biopic The Social Network.
Like Andy Herzfeld, however, Sculley notes that the movie is not always accurate and that there, “was a lot of creative license taken.”
Steve Jobs is often portrayed as an egotistical tyrant in the books, movies, and documentaries that try to encapsulate the Apple CEO but according to someone who was both one of Jobs closest friends and a bitter rival, pop culture has totally blown it when it comes to portraying Steve.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley says he’s optimistic that the upcoming Steve Jobs movie written by Aaron Sorkin will fix some of his problems with how Jobs’ personality has been misrepresented.
Backed by ex-Apple CEO John Sculley, Obi Worldphone is a startup company that’s hoping to shake up the affordable Android market with two new devices that combine stylish designs and decent specifications with even more attractive price tags.
Meet the Obi Worldphone SF1 and SJ1.5, which start at as little as $129.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley dropped some interesting new tidbits about Apple’s history in a recent interview. He said that all the way back in 1984, Jobs was dreaming up the idea of a “Mac phone.”
This “Mac phone” would be a desktop device that acted as a phone, but ran a version of the Mac’s software.
The first official trailer for the Steve Jobs movie we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. The one-minute clip gives us an early look at Michael Fassbender as Apple’s co-founder and former CEO, along with co-stars Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels.
I’m a sucker for Apple history, and I particularly enjoy hearing from the people who had an impact on shaping Steve Jobs into the incredible force of nature that he became.
In a new interview with John Sculley, the former Apple CEO sheds some light on what may have been his single biggest lasting impact on Apple: the drive toward making the experience of using an Apple product one of the company’s most important focuses.
Sculley catches a lot of flack for being the CEO who kicked Jobs out of Apple back in 1985, but after Jobs and Tim Cook he was the best of CEO Apple ever had, and someone who’s always interesting to hear talk about Apple. In this particular video he shares his thoughts on the original Macintosh ad and why Apple trumps everyone else at marketing.
More of Sculley’s thoughts after the jump.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley has launched a new lineup of budget smartphones in the Middle East — although he admits Steve Jobs would like not be enamoured with them.
“Steve being Steve would say, you can do alot better,” he told Gulf Business.
The range includes various animal-themed devices, including the Octopus S520, the Falcon S451, Hornbill S551, Wolverine S501, and Obi F240. They are being launched by India’s Obi Mobile, a budget smartphone brand, which John Sculley co-founded.
Nearly three years after Steve Jobs’ death, Apple’s keynotes have become pale imitations of their former glory. The last major keynote — November’s introduction of the iPad Air and Retina mini — was a major international snoozefest.
Utterly devoid of excitement, it served only to stoke the pervasive rumors of Apple’s lack of innovation after Jobs (which aren’t true, but nonetheless).
It’s time for Jony Ive to take over.
Less than a decade ago, Apple was singled out by Greenpeace as one of the least environmentally friendly tech companies on the planet.
Apple has since turned over a new leaf, embracing environmentalism as something every bit as central to the company as the latest iPhone.
Just how important became evident a few months ago, when, during a routine earnings call, Cook spoke of his dream for Apple as a “force for good in the world beyond our products.” The recent global celebrations for Earth Day for the first time in nearly a decade mean that his dream is closer to becoming a reality.
So what changed exactly?
The greening of Apple: it took almost 10 years for the Cupertino company to turn around its dismal eco-scorecard.
But that worm has truly turned: in this week’s edition of Cult of Mac Magazine, author Luke Dormehl talks to former Apple exec John Sculley and other insiders about why this change is all about current Apple CEO Tim Cook. Apple’s green day means a better future and even better products, they say.
Also this week, we’ve got reviews editor Charlie Sorrel taking a deep dive into underwater iPhoneography, plus his reviews for the best in Apple-related paraphernalia — including a mullet-style notebook (you know: business up front, party in the back.) Our tastemaker Buster Hein has once again sifted through all the offerings in the iTunes store to serve up the most scrumptious offerings in music, books and movies and Evan Killham rounds up what you need in apps.
Image: Wikipedia
Apple isn’t being valued as a creative leap company so much as it is a predictable cash machine, says former CEO John Sculley.
Speaking with India’s Economic Times about the launch of his latest venture, pCell — a technology that allows huge amounts of data to travel on spectrum-crunched wireless networks, while offering faster speeds and fewer call drops to customers — Sculley gave his opinion of Apple’s current situation:
“Google and Apple are like ATMs, they just keep generating cash. Google takes more risk than Apple. Apple tends to stay the course, and this year is a very big year for Apple in terms of products. It’s not clear that they’re going to demonstrate a creative leap this year despite the products, like they did when Steve Jobs was leader. I think it’s probably unfair to expect them to have a creative leap every five years.”
Former Apple CEO John Sculley is one of the principal investors behind a new smartphone brand set to launch in India.
The as-yet-unnamed brand is being funded by the investment and acquisition company, Inflexionpoint, for which Sculley serves as a founding partner.
The brand is set to be led by Ajay Sharma, who was previously head of HTC’s India operation. The company will launch a series of smartphones, which will debut in April this year.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley has confirmed that he and a group of investors were lining up a bid for BlackBerry, but they waited too long and lost out. In an interview on Bloomberg Surveillance, Sculley reveals how he was surprised when the struggling smartphone maker announced a $1 billion investment deal earlier this week.
Blackberry’s in trouble. Ever since the iPhone’s debut in 2007 blindsided them, the once-dominant smatphone company has been struggling to recover its mojo. Who can save the floundering Canadian company from ruin? Former Apple CEO John Sculley to the rescue!
Former Apple CEO John Sculley believes Tim Cook is doing a “terrific job” at leading Apple after taking over from Steve Jobs two years ago. Cooks is “continuing the Apple philosophy of no compromise and quality of their products and great styling,” Sculley said, and he commends Cook for “not trying to be Steve Jobs.”
