Apple Computer:

Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. In 1976, Woz invented the Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs's parents in order to sell it. They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula, Jr. As Apple continued to expand with Wozniak's next version, the Apple II, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion. In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" Apple president Mike Markkula also wanted to retire and believed that Jobs lacked the discipline and temperament needed to run Apple on a daily basis and that Sculley's conventional business background and recent successes would give a more favorable image.

Apple logo in 1977, created by Rob Janoff with the rainbow color theme used until 1998.

In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa. One year later, Apple employee Jef Raskin invented the Macintosh. The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium". The Macintosh became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, as

well as layoffs and disappointing sales performance. An internal power struggle developed between Jobs and Sculley. Jobs kept meetings running past midnight, sent out lengthy faxes, then called new meetings at 7:00 am. The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Sculley learned that Jobsbelieving Sculley to be "bad for Apple" and the wrong person to lead the companyhad been attempting to organize a boardroom coup, and on May 24, 1985, he called a board meeting to resolve the matter. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties as head of the Macintosh division. Jobs resigned from Apple five months later and founded NeXT Inc. the same year. In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." And he added, "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.