Ex-Apple CEO John Sculley Dishes On Steve Jobs 417
digitaldc writes "Here's a full transcript of the interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs. It's long but worth reading because there are some awesome insights into how Jobs does things. It's also one of the frankest CEO interviews you'll ever read. Sculley talks openly about Jobs and Apple, admits it was a mistake to hire him to run the company and that he knows little about computers. It's rare for anyone, never mind a big-time CEO, to make such frank assessment of their career in public."
Control (Score:5, Insightful)
His tradeoff was he believed that he had to control the entire system. He made every decision. The boxes were locked.
It wasn't only back then, it's especially true today. I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass but say DRM, locked-down hardware, restrictions, end user licenses and so on are bad. Apple and Steve Jobs is basically everything that we should be against. Even Windows is open, even if you don't get the source code. Linux is obviously the best choice.
Steve Jobs still is extremely fanatic about having full control in everything. So much for all us geeks who like to play around with the hardware and learn things. If everything back in the day was as closed as Steve Jobs wants it to be now, do you think we geeks could have learned so much ourself? Just to code some simple hello world application you would have needed to buy a "coding" license from Apple. Not really feasible for a 10 year old kid who is just starting to learn programming.
Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs is a minimalist, heavy-handed, hard-driving, design-obsessed prick?!? Not exactly news.
And I'll say it once again. Considering the observation that Sculley makes that MS is all about hiring geeks and smart people and Apple is all about hiring designers and marketers ("Apple is a designers company, not an engineers company," as he says), it still amazes me that MS is so bashed on /. and Apple so celebrated. You would think the opposite would be true here. Are we still longing to sit at the cool kids' table or something, or have we just bought into that "lifestyle" shit too?
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass
One word: Shiny.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously Apple isn't "all about hiring designers and marketers". All the designers in the world can't create a working product. That still takes engineers, programmers, etc.
What Apple does is come up with a nice design and have the technical people make it real. Most other companies have the techs make a product then have designers spray perfume on it.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:1, Insightful)
I might be able to relate some of the fascination of Apple and the hatred of Microsoft here on Slashdot. It goes back to the early days when many of us from the usenet newsgroups found we could make a forum on the web. Apple promoted quality hardware and at the time many of us were losing our temper at ill behaved Microsoft products. And much of the culture of the internet in the day was very fluent with Linux. So we saw a Unix like operating system influence Apple.
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass
I don't know what comment threshold you browse at to think that EVERYONE (or even close to that) gives Jobs a free pass.
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
His tradeoff was he believed that he had to control the entire system. He made every decision. The boxes were locked.
It wasn't only back then, it's especially true today. I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass but say DRM, locked-down hardware, restrictions, end user licenses and so on are bad. Apple and Steve Jobs is basically everything that we should be against. Even Windows is open, even if you don't get the source code. Linux is obviously the best choice.
Not really feasible for a 10 year old kid who is just starting to learn programming.
I think the reason that Apple is so celebrated here is that OS X provides what many long-time Linux users/developers have wanted: a highly functioning unix-like system under the hood with a nice polished user interface.
I do all of my "real work" on Linux systems, but my desktop and laptop are Macs because for most needs, it just works and I get a full bash shell and unix OS when needed. Yes, I pay a premium for that shiny hardware, but for me it's worth it not to have to deal with finding device drivers or re-compiling kernels, and it's nice to be able to view all forms of media, too.
Don't get me wrong. I still believe that Apple's DRM is evil and I wish that ever format was open and non-proprietary. I used to fight that fight when I was younger. But, now that I'm old, working full time, and have a family, I just don't have any energy left to get into fights with my desktop OS just to get some Dora The Explorer video to play for my kids.
Re:I'm all for objectivity... (Score:3, Insightful)
He meant himself: Sculley admits it was a mistake to hire Sculley to run the company.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:3, Insightful)
Ignoring your blatant trolling there, Apple may not be perfect, but they are certainly not as evil as M$. Apple wants you to use their hardware, they don't force you to use their software, which I'm ok with. Microsoft on the other hand tries as hard as they possibly can to lock you into their software, using all sorts of evil (and sometimes illegal) strategies. They have no interest in making people's lives easier or more compatible. You can't even read an HFS partition in Windows without special 3rd party software. MacOS has been able to read FAT and NTFS for over a decade. This is not just a technical limitation of Windows, it's deliberate. And that's just a single example. Not to mention the quality issues of M$ software. If M$ didn't exist maybe we would bash Apple, but until that time I will choose to bash M$ over Apple any day of the week. And lifestyle has nothing to do with it -- in my experience Apple products are of a much higher quality both aesthetically and technically, which I value, and thus Apple gets more approval from me than M$.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:2, Insightful)
Steve Jobs is a minimalist, heavy-handed, hard-driving, design-obsessed prick?!? Not exactly news
In your professional assessment, you forgot "turtleneck-wearing"...
What I find interesting is that his followers are materialistic, light-handed, lazy, status-obsessed pricks.
Not quite the opposite, but tangential in some ways.
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
When did nerds stop saying "wow, technically impressive" and start saying "ooh, shiny?" I always thought it was the artsy types that went for Apple, not nerds. When did nerds start caring what they looked like or what normal people thought about us or how pretty our computers were? I mean, a cool looking handmade computer case is one thing, but fashion?
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:4, Insightful)
May I remind you that we also celebrate Linux here?
Re:Control (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I could tell you...finding people that are more impressed by what's inside a computer than outside is getting harder and harder.
Better standards breed better products (Score:5, Insightful)
These standards create better products that are deemed superior. Once that catches on, then others trying to compete will HAVE to match those standards in order for them to sell. This is a good thing for everyone. For example, Japanese cars were (and some still argue are) far superior than US cars. In order to stay in business US car manufacturers HAD to improve their design and quality standards to even compete with the Japanese. Now, US cars are much better quality than they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s and this is a good thing for everyone.
It's the Woz legacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Control (Score:4, Insightful)
If everything back in the day was as closed as Steve Jobs wants it to be now, do you think we geeks could have learned so much ourself? Just to code some simple hello world application you would have needed to buy a "coding" license from Apple. Not really feasible for a 10 year old kid who is just starting to learn programming.
Hmm. Apple provides XCode and examples for free, installs perl, python, and a variety of other programming languages for free by default..
I think you might be mistaken about what Steve Jobs is trying to control. The handset market? Sure.The desktop market? .. Not as much as you'd like to lead us to believe.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:2, Insightful)
But Apple has to approve it or you can't use it.
And, BTW, since when has MS "forced" me to use Windows or any other MS application? Last time I checked, I'm free to install whatever OS I want on my computer. I'm free to install whatever apps I want in Windows too. When Netscape was suing MS in the 90's, even they acknowledged that MS never tried to block anyone from installing Netscape (or any other browser) in Windows--which they could have. I've never once had MS tell me I *had* to use any of their software. There have always been competing OS's and applications, and no computer manufacturer has ever blocked them (nor has Windows ever blocked applications that competed with Internet Explorer, Office, etc.).
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:3, Insightful)
ven worse, if the company closes the hardware, forces everyone to buy every piece of hardware from them, it is ok, but if someone else tries to support every hardware provider, we call it a close system and we condemn it.
Are these the new type of judgments from technical people nowadays?
Why is apple so celebrated? Girls (Score:2, Insightful)
Girls like Macs and Ipods and iphones. The nice thing about girls with macs is they dont bother you asking for free tech support since they rarely :)
need it and when they do they go to the apple store. They love their macbook with the same intensity as they love their cats. If a girl lets
you touch her macbook you know you are in a serious relationship. If a girl shows you her macbook she is expecting a compliment like complimenting
her shoes or her dress, it is not a random piece of technology for her it is a life accessory. If you want to get assaulted by a woman, mess with her
iphone... you do not touch a woman's iphone! If she shows you her first iphone, you are expected to oooh and ahhhh like she is showing you her first born.
The "lifestyle" accessories is a woman thing, which us male geeks can not possibly understand.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the whine of someone who can't afford something.
I couldn't give a damn about status or materialism. I don't buy designer labels or expensive watches, and don't even own a car any more. But when it comes to computing, I want the best tool for the job, and because I haven't been lazy, I can afford it. For about 7 years now, that's meant buying Apple.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal view... (Score:5, Insightful)
I dislike Steve Jobs a ton, I dislike the overly proprietary nature of Apple devices, I dislike most of my alternative options more. I've been into Linux since 1995, I've been in IT even longer, I appreciate open standards and things that work properly and freely. My next laptop and computer? Macbook Pro and an iMac. This coming from someone who has built computers since the 386 days.
I can still run Windows or Linux on them, they are solidly built with all of the features I need, real battery life on the MBP, iLife which is perfect for my photos and music hobby work, my graphics apps run better, no antivirus/malware/B.S. All this comes at about a few hundred dollar premium, but the time not spent delousing an infection here and there over a few years alone makes up for it.
The problem is that I used to love to hack and play and even if things were kludgy or inelegant, they worked. As I've gotten older I really don't need 4,000 choices, I just want one that works like it should the first time and every time. Does that mean I'd ever think of renting movies/TV from Apple or play into any number of their lifestyle and hip and trendy stuff? No. It's simply the right tool for the job for me and denying it for image or trend reasons is silly. If a purple hammer sunk a nail each and every time on the first blow, I'd happily use the purple hammer.
Re:Control (Score:4, Insightful)
When did nerds stop saying "wow, technically impressive" and start saying "ooh, shiny?"
The same geeks never stopped or started.
There's the Linux crowd who prefer openness and always did, believing that the best way to stay on the technological frontier and staying out of bueracracy is to stay open and close to the community.
And then there's the Apple crowd who prefer coherence and functionality whatever the cost. It's not as important to those to always do the very latest hip stuff technology-wise, but the stuff should always work and it should be an ultra-smooth experience that may very well be the result of an iron fist. They also agree with the iron fist's philosophy in design, minimalism, and ease-of-use. There's no reality distortion field. That's an annoying myth. There's an agreement in philosophy though, a philosophy that is miles away both the Linux one and the Windows one.
And then there's Windows. Windows is neither open, on the technological edge, coherent, or well-engineered. So there's no surprise here that it's bashed from both sides.
I don't think many Linux users jump ship to Apple or vice versa though, as you seem to believe.
Re:Control (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything OSX is more open than Windows; the guts are open source (Darwin). It's just higher levels that are closed. On top of that Apple uses and contributes to a number of F/OSS projects to provide things like printing (CUPS), remote file system access (SAMBA), remote shell access (OpenSSH) and lots of others. I'd venture to say that more than 50% of of OSX is F/OSS code and Apple has generally been quite good about working with the projects they use. Apparently there's been some friction with the FSF a few times, but given that Stallman and Jobs are like oil and water...
Say what you want about the closed nature of the iDevices (and personally I like my iPhone, but think the iPad might be to limited ), but the Mac itself is way more open than Windows. It also represents, as another poster pointed out, what I've always really wanted. A reliable, Unix based, workstation with a good user interface, decent library of available commercial software, and capability to use pretty much all the F/OSS stuff I need.
If you want to see what Linux on the Desktop should look like, look no further than OSX. Not the design per se, though I like it well enough, but the way the OS works from a user point of view. In OSX you have a consumer OS. You never, ever have to go to the command line. You do anything you need to configure the computer in any way you need from simple easy to understand GUI tools. You can run all your software without hiccups, dependency issues, or driver headaches. BUT if you want to, and you know how to, you can quickly and easily open a command prompt, use the all the standard Unix tools, script to your heart's content, even install a Linux style package manager and use all the tools available to any of the free *nixes.
Re:Control (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
I think some of the technologies from apple - for example Grand Central Dispatch [wikipedia.org], chunks of WebKit, etc, are very cool bits of tech.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a large amount of confusion here is the use of the word "Design." Design is mistakenly interpreted by some as the way something looks. Design is actually the way something WORKS (as well as looks). How I interact with a tool can be as important as how well it works.
If you had 2 hammers, one with a rubberized grip on the handle, and another with metal spikes on the handle, I'd choose the rubberized one because it's more comfortable for me to use, even though both can drive a nail effectively. I'll respect everyone's intelligence enough to not continue the metaphor - but you get the idea. When Apple talks about design, they are not talking about making something that looks good and works terrible, they are talking about something that is thoughtful, inside and out.
I would say that Dell actually does more 'flashy" designs designed to catch the eye, but on the inside, it's still the same old rotten crap.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh FFS leave the antenna alone already. First, it seems the problems is hardly limited to iPhones, other phones demonstrate the same problems, they just don't have to hype and hate built up to make seem like such an issue. Second, there was a relatively straightforward fix within a week or two. Third, point me at a company that hasn't released a product with an engineering flaw. The devices were tested with cases on them, because they didn't them being leaked (lot of good that did). Was it a mistake? Of course. Was it an understandable mistake? Yes. It happens. Apple's initial reaction could have been handled better, but in the end it there was a reasonably painless resolution and they won't make the same mistake again.
No one is saying Apple is perfect. All they're saying is that Apple tends to fit engineering to the design rather than vice versa. It's bit them before (I think is was called the X-cube? Back about 8-9 years ago used to crack at all its joints?) it'll bite them again. It's generally been successful though, and I'd venture a guess that they've had no more engineering disasters than any other major tech manufacturer.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Control (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because it matters less each day.
Especially in the lowend segment. Now an inexpensive netbook has enough "oomph" for most users daily tasks. It used to be that even a entry level user would have to check specs to make sure the computer would run whatever software they wanted to run. Now caring about specs and performance is left to high-end gamers.
Re:Control (Score:1, Insightful)
Halo effect. OS X is the nerdiest operating system EVER. Once people saw OS X and realized that Apple could be geek-friendly they figured the company wasn't all that bad. As long as Apple kept making a great OS and good computers that impression stuck.
I'm pretty sure that halo effect is being reversed with the iPhone though.
Re:Control (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
But Apple has to approve it or you can't use it.
Apple has to approve every OS X application? Since when has this been true? Oh wait you're talking about iOS which is a different area than their desktop. And BTW, MS has decided to used the walled garden approach with Windows Phone 7 so your point is moot.
. When Netscape was suing MS in the 90's, even they acknowledged that MS never tried to block anyone from installing Netscape (or any other browser) in Windows--which they could have.
Were you following the same antitrust trial I was following?
Then there's the Java. Among other things, Intel wanted to develop a JVM for Java on their processors. MS hinted that AMD would get "preferential" treatment in their next version of Windows if Intel did that.
I've never once had MS tell me I *had* to use any of their software. There have always been competing OS's and applications, and no computer manufacturer has ever blocked them (nor has Windows ever blocked applications that competed with Internet Explorer, Office, etc.).
You know when I tried to load Mozilla onto my Mac it plain refused to work. VLC doesn't work either. MSN Messenger is completely nonfunctional. OpenOffice does nothing--Oh wait--none of that is true--they all work.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Control (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me see if I can explain. I do software development for a living. I used to build my own computers and that used to take a lot of time. Now, all nerds know that the "it just works" mantra of Apple is pretty much bullshit, all computers have issues at some point, but I have to say that I spend far less time screwing around with the OS using OSX on Apple hardware than I did with windows or Linux. It's not that it's trouble free, it's that it's a lot less trouble, in my personal experience. Plus under the hood it's basically UNIX and since I was using UNIX before windows even existed I can use all the shell scripting stuff I learned in the 80's. (yes, I can use it with Linux as well, refer to prior statement). And there is nothing wrong with ascetics either. I appreciate the machined aluminium case of my MBP. I've watched the videos of the CNC machines making the cases, plus the case is exceptionally rigid. If hunting down videos of how the case is machined isn't nerdy, I'd like to know what is.
For me the Mac is the best tool for the job, and the 25% premium I paid over a comparable Windows machine has been more than repaid by the time I didn't spend uninstalling crap ware and dealing with typical window maintenance issues, and for me, using an environment that lets me work how I want to work. There are always going to be a large number of people what buy something because of how it looks. How many people actually take their 335is or M3 to a track for example? Personally I don't really care what anyone thinks of my choice of computer, car, watch, cell phone, whatever. I use what works best for me, and right now that is OS X on Apple hardware. If that changes in the future I will too.
There is a thriving home-built plane community (Score:3, Insightful)
...but those guys don't sit around all day and whine that they're not allowed to tinker with the engine on their United Airlines flight.
Your example about software is absurd--you don't have to buy a "coding" license to write hello world on a Mac box. Absolutely absurd. I've compiled open source apps on my MacBook and I never gave Steve Jobs an extra dime for the privilege.
Wanting a phone or a computer that "just works" for nontechnical family members or even myself doesn't make me less of a nerd than you.
Re:Not exactly a revelation (Score:3, Insightful)
All the designers in the world can't create a working product. That still takes engineers, programmers, etc.
Sorry, but I call BS on this.
I'm not an engineer, but I've designed a lot of products, and have several patents. Don't assume engineers can't design and designers can't engineer. The best people tend to be multi-talented (programmer/musician, engineer/photographer).
I have noticed that a LOT of people attribute their success to their degree, and wrongly assume someone with no degree cannot be successful. I think your "without engineers..." line of thinking smacks of this.
But you are spot-on about most companies doing design as an afterthought.
Re:Incorrect details (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is where the geeks (engineers, programmers, etc) don't see the viewpoint of the suits (marketers, C-suite people).
He PAID for it, so it is HIS, all the work is HIS. HE did it, 'cause he financed it.
That is just how suit-thinking works, and it is why geeks and suits are never going to see eye-to-eye on IP.
Taiwan and China also saved Apple (Score:1, Insightful)
Jobs can surely build beautifull products, but he also gets lucky on timing that he can bring the cost down to a level that comsumers are ready to pay for it. In the days when a PC costs 1500 and a Mac costs 3000, people choose PC, nowadays a PC costs 500 and a Mac costs 1000, people choose Mac. Try to build iphones in US and ask for 1000 apiece and see how the sales figure goes....
Re:Control (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X is impressive because it suffers from this less. The total control wielded by Steve Jobs allows Apple to introduce new(ish) technologies in a timely manner. Yes, things like Grand Central or Time Machine may not be entirely unique, but they work and are available to a large audience.
I don't think that geeks give Steve Jobs a free pass. I think they just acknowledge that his way of doing things has been very successful in the grand scheme of things. OS X is an impressive piece of software that brings to the table many of the things that Linux folk have been talking about for years.
Power PC Processor (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is a bit unfair to call the choice of the Power PC processor a mistake. At the time the 68K family was running out of gas and Motorola and IBM were pouring lots of money into the development of the RISC processor. RISC is a confusing acronom. What's important about RISC ISN'T the limited instruction set, but the fact that the small instruction set allows hardwiring of the processor rather than having to use a rom driven micro sequencer and lots of micro code. As Moore's law progressed and more transistors could be stuffed onto a chip you could build a CISC processor the same way. As a result the advantage the PPC had was slowly eclipsed and Intel's x86 designs pulled ahead. But there was a window of time where the PPC was a more powerfull choice. And Apple was in that window.
Re:Incorrect details (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What the Hell? Sculley dishes on Jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
I get the impression that "dish" is now used as the opposite of "diss" in the gossip media, since it fits easily into headlines. So, if someone "dishes" on someone else, it's supposed to be a good thing.
Re:Control (Score:3, Insightful)
Over the past seven Ubuntu releases, I've needed to (a) dick about with partitions to allow the upgrade packages to fit in /var, (b) never had an upgrade of X that didn't trash my video and make me dick about with xorg.conf, or (c) dick about with fstab to get the system to recognize existing partitions. And don't get me started on the sound software which only started to work about two releases ago. And even then, the players still have no decent networking interface unless you mount your audio file server as an NFS share (how 1980s is that?). I had problems for three releases because I tried to install a development version of an Nvidia driver and it would neither remove nor upgrade properly - for three effing releases! Yeah, as far as distros go, Ubuntu is the pick of the litter, but that's not saying much - and I speak as a person who has rebuilt (and modified) kernels, has used various UNIX systems since the late 1970's, and who has an MSCS to boot. And, if I may rant for a second, UNIX OS'es as a concept are getting so long in the tooth that it's not even funny... but I digress.
However much you dislike Apple as a company, their stuff works with almost no fuss - you get all of the goodness of a UNIX system (actually, even better than Linux because it's a BSD kernel) without the numerous hassles you get with trying to get even the best Linux distros to work consistently.
Re:Control (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is, in my mind at least. the hand-made custom case isn't fashion, it's art. The designer label is just commercial snobbery.
For my own part, I believed the "shiny" argument (Score:5, Insightful)
for far too long. I owned nothing Apple and had limited experience with Apple products from about 1985-2008. My biggest experience was with Newton, which I actually liked a lot, but of course that was some time ago.
In late 2008 I got an iPhone 3Gs. The device impressed the living hell out of me in comparison to other smartphones. iPad came out and the same thing happened; my first experience testing one made clear to me that this device was light years ahead of the other tablets I'd owned -- a Vadem Clio, a Fujitsu Stylistic, a Toshiba M200 -- in actual *usability* for general-purpose consumer information tasks.
So this summer I started playing with "hackintosh" OS X distros on a Thinkpad T60, even as my frustration with KDE4 (and the pending switch to Gnome Shell) grew to epic proportions. Within a few weeks it was clear I would eventually switch and the only question was when.
By September I'd become a Mac user with Linux installed on a drive (just because I'd somehow feel naked without Linux around somewhere) but not actually in use for day-day computing at all. With iTerm and Mac ports on Snow Leopard, I have a more stable and serious Unix feeling than I think I've had since the days of SunOS on a Sun 3/80 when I was a CS undergrad. It just feels right. It feels more Unix than Linux did in a surprising way, despite the odd filesystem layout and massive changes in things like the init system.
And the software purchasing ran downhill like a flood. I thought I was an OSS person, but within a month of switching I'd also bought Adobe CS5, Aperture, Office 2008/Mac, and iLife. And using these things seriously makes me regret the years spent coaxing every last bit of life out of GIMP, Gthumb, OpenOffice.org, and so on, not to mention the total absence of things like pervasive drag-and-drop from Linux environments.
Really, it amounts to growing up. I didn't realize how much productivity I lost to the ideological limitations of OSS platforms over the years (and I wrote a number of Linux and OSS books in the '90s and early '00s, so I'm no n00b) until the last few months with OS X.
The /. crowd may hate Apple, but if this were a three-way to-the-death between Microsoft, KDE/GNOME, and Apple, I'd be cheering for Apple all the way. They may be totalitarian, but their totalitarian world is damn near the utopian system that makes totalitarianism okay.
Steve the perfectionist? (Score:2, Insightful)
From the interview: "Microsoft’s philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve would never do that. He doesn’t get anything out there until it is perfected."
Riiiiight. {cough faulty IP4 antenna design, cracking screens}