October 15, 1993: John Sculley, the CEO responsible for forcing Steve Jobs out of Apple, is forced to leave the company himself.
Following a terrible quarter, in which the company posted a 97% drop in earnings, Sculley steps down as Apple chairman. He takes $1 million in severance pay, a one-year consulting fee of $750,000, a commitment from Apple to buy his $4 million mansion and $2 million Lear jet, and $2.4 million in stock options. Total take: around $10 million.
October 11, 1995: Steve Jobs files the paperwork to float Pixar Animation Studios on the stock market.
A turning point in Jobs’ life, the Pixar initial public offering turns him into a billionaire. But things very nearly don’t turn out so well.
October 10, 1993: Apple ships its Macintosh Color Classic II, the last of the 9-inch compact Macs.
Also known as the Performa 275, the Color Classic II will eventually become something of a collector’s item, since Apple released it only in Canada, Asia and Europe.
October 9, 1991: A court orders Apple to pay $26.5 million to Apple Corps, The Beatles’ record label and holding company, for trademark infringement.
It is the second time Apple is forced to pay The Beatles. It comes a decade after Apple swore it would never get into the music business.
October 6, 1997: Michael Dell makes an infamously bleak appraisal of Apple’s fortunes. Asked what he would do with the struggling company, the founder of Dell Inc. says he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
As incorrect forecasts go, this will go down as one of the more notable in tech history. But it doesn’t seem that way at the time.
October 3, 1994: Apple CEO Michael Spindler reassures the world that Apple “is not a lame-duck company.”
Why would anyone suspect that it is? The answer lies in Apple’s collapsing Mac sales, massive layoffs and a $188 million quarterly loss. At 15 months into his stint as CEO, Spindler wants to reassure everyone that the worst is over.
Sadly, things will decline further before they start to turn around.
October 2, 1991: As the Cold War comes to an end, hell freezes over a second time as Apple and IBM agree to put aside their differences.
Having been bitter rivals for the past decade, the two tech giants host a press conference at the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco to unveil their new partnership. “We want to be a major player in the computer industry,” Apple CEO John Sculley says. “The only way to do that is to work with another major player.”
September 28, 1997: Apple debuts its iconic “Think Different” television commercial, aligning the troubled computer company with some of history’s most celebrated freethinking rebels.
The most famous tagline in Apple history, “Think different” doesn’t just articulate how Cupertino differs from its competitors. It also highlights how Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, will forge a future far different from its floundering, money-losing days of the early 1990s.
September 26, 1997: In one of his first tasks after returning to Apple as interim CEO, Steve Jobs reveals the company’s massive quarterly loss of $161 million.
Giving investors the bad news is miserable, but things are about to change dramatically for Cupertino.
September 21, 1999: A little startup called Google comes out of beta, with the launch of a website that will let the general public easily search the internet for information.
To Apple, which is embracing the internet with its twin iMac G3 and iBook products, Google seems like the perfect ally. Sadly, the relationship doesn’t remain rosy for long.
