Returning Steve Jobs took over Apple 25 years ago

Steve Jobs’ departure and return to Apple is as central to Apple’s history as just about anything else. It has been thought through in countless books, two different feature films, more than one documentary and more than a few articles.

Both his departure and his return also got ugly at times, but the things that happened as they did helped make possible Apple’s many victories over the past two decades.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, although he was never the company’s CEO during his first stint with the company. Apple was instead led by a succession of chief executives, starting with Michael Scott and Mike Markkula, until Jobs recruited PepsiCo’s John Sculley in 1983.

Jobs and Sculley soon clashed, and Apple’s fate took a turn for the worse. Then, after a failed coup, Jobs was demoted, leading to his departure in 1985.

Steve Jobs then founded NeXT Computer in 1988, while Apple’s struggles continued through the early to mid-1990s. Partnerships with companies like IBM and promises of radically improved Mac operating systems all fell apart.

Getting Steve Jobs back to Apple wasn’t special, but that’s what happened. With the NeXT deal, Jobs returned to Apple as an “advisor,” reporting directly to then-CEO Gil Amelio.

Amelio, the son of Italian immigrants, has a Ph.D. in physics and had worked as a researcher. He was CEO of National Semiconductor and served on Apple’s board for two years before taking over the CEO seat in 1996.

“This is a complementary arrangement, and the pieces fit together better than any other alternative we’ve looked at, and it will launch a new round of technology,” Amelio said at the time of the Apple/NeXT Deal Announcement†

Later, in a Q&A, Jobs shared a story about his decision to return.

“When I was trying to decide whether to go back to Apple or not, I struggled. I talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions,” Jobs said in 2001, as reported by Jonathan Berger, an Apple blogger intern.

“And then I was there, late one night, struggling with this and I called a friend of mine at 2 a.m.,” Jobs continued. “I said, ‘Should I come back, don’t I?’ and the friend replied, “Steve, look. I don’t care about Apple. Just make up your own mind,” and hung up.”

“It was in that moment that I realized I really cared about Apple,” Jobs concluded.

Then there was speculation for years as to who this friend had been on the phone. Much later, Jobs said: biographer Walter Isaacson that it was Intel’s Andy Grove.

Jobs’ return to the company was no wonder the company turned around in a flash. Instead, it was followed by a series of bad events for Apple.

For example, Macworld, held in San Francisco shortly after the announcement of the acquisition of NeXT was a disaster. It was plagued by a faulty TelePrompter and Amelio forgot to introduce the guest of honor Muhammad Ali.

In February, Apple announced its worst quarter on record, leading to the layoff of 3,000 employees. Then, too, their layoffs occurred, just as several employees of NeXT or otherwise loyal to Jobs were being promoted throughout the company.

Amelio was still in charge, but it wasn’t easy for him. He faced a hostile takeover attempt by Larry Ellison of Oracle, and although it failed, it involved someone selling 1.5 million shares of Apple.

It was later revealed that Jobs supported Ellison’s move and that it was Jobs who had sold those shares.

During all of this, Amelio lost his board’s trust, and on the July 4 holiday in 1997, Apple chairman Ed Woolard informed Amelio that he was out as CEO. He officially resigned on July 9, 1997.

Amelio was CEO of Apple exactly 500 days and later wrote a memoircalled On the firing line: my 500 days at Apple. Amelio may have been one of many Apple CEOs to leave involuntarily, but he was also the last to do so.

After his departure, Jobs was not immediately named CEO or even interim CEO. At the time, he reportedly specifically asked to be ineligible for the top position and was even put in charge of finding a permanent replacement.

Still, it soon became apparent that Jobs was in charge, and in September 1997 he was officially named interim CEO. He held the interim tag for over two years, eventually introducing himself as the permanent CEO at Macworld Expo in 2000.

But once he was in charge, Jobs moved quickly—and where he saw fit, also relentlessly. He canceled products released during his exile, such as the much-loved but poorly-selling Newton and the lesser-known Cyberdog OpenDoc application suite.

In August, he announced what was then a… shocking deal with Microsoft, in which Bill Gates’ company agreed to invest $150 million in Apple.

At that point, Jony Ive was promoted to Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, helping to bring about an unprecedented array of innovations and success. The iMac came in 1998, the iPod and Apple Store in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the App Store in 2008, and the iPad in 2010.

Apple was bankrupt within 90 days when Jobs returned. But within a relatively short time, it climbed back up and became hugely profitable.

That has obviously continued since, to the point where Apple is now often officially the most valuable company in the world.

It continued to climb to that point while Jobs remained CEO, which he did until he resigned in August 2011 for health reasons. He then named Tim Cook his successor, and Jobs died two months later, on October 5, 2011.

Not everything Steve Jobs did at Apple, even during his triumphant second run, was an unqualified success. MobileMe, a precursor to the much more successful iCloud, was a public failure.

Jobs tried underhanded tactics to get rid of Amelio and regain control of Apple. And yet there is no doubt that he was the best person possible for Apple in the end.

Tim Cook has since had a decade of pushing Apple to profitability in the stratosphere, but without Jobs it probably would have gone bankrupt in the late 1990s.

His striking effect on Apple, and on technology, including business, has been so significant that his work remains influential. Not only did the iPhone become and remains the best-selling product of all time, but in 2022, Jobs awarded posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden.