Hi Peter:
Can we stop the quibbling!
Anyway, as far as I can tell from the research I have done, Sculley had very little to do with any of the tech on the Newton, or any other Apple product for that matter. Newton was all researched and developed in a secret 'warehouse' not far from Apple's headquarters. Sculley has actually been criticized for not participating more in the day-to-day affairs at Apple: many times he had little knowledge of what was happening with Apple - with its people and products. Jean-Louis Gassée would confront him on this, saying to Sculley that he had no idea how to work with people, and did not understand the products. That he was not respected by many people at Apple.
Not surprisingly, Jean-Louis Gassée left the company shortly after this confrontation with Sculley.
Sculley took a very executive approach to things and distanced himself from people and projects. Many think this was a significant cause of his downfall. In fact, during his last few years at Apple, he was tired and disinterested in the company and the industry. He was looking for a way out, according to interviews with his secretary.
Credit for Newton can be given to all the engineers that worked on it, including key people like Steve Capps, Steve Sakoman and Michael Tchao.
Steve Jobs, of course, is totally different. He is involved in much of what happens at Apple at the grass roots level. He is even mentioned on several of Apple's patents as a sole or co-inventor. As Jobs states, Apple does not do market research, they just make products that they want to use, and it just so happens others like them too.
Sculley, on the other hand, had a bit of an old school approach to business. In addition, he approved too many dead-end research projects that sucked up tons of money, hurting Apple as the years went on. He just did not really know what he was doing - what the market wanted, or was going to want (tech predictions).
Sculley was simply too myopic and disinterested in technology (in the long-term) to be effective. But what we can credit him for is allowing the Newton project to go forward, and the conception of the Knowledge Navigator, but even that is a result of a group of thinkers who put all the pieces together.
Jobs has himself to blame though, because he hunted Sculley down to work at Apple. On that instance, while Apple was in total chaos, complete with constant infighting - childish squabbles - Sculley was simply too far on the other end of the management style spectrum to be a good, long-term option for Apple. A short-term consultant or interim-CEO? Sure. A long-term option for Apple? No. But sooner, rather than later, Sculley, through his insensitive and dogmatic approach, ousted Jobs from Apple. That was Sculley's mistake, and as far as I can tell from one of his last public interviews about things at Apple, he realizes that now: that he was in over his head, and Steve was the real master, not him.
But in the end, all is well, because everything worked itself out, and we wouldn't have OS X if it wasn't for NEXT!
Ryan
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Received on Mon Jul 13 20:51:48 2009
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