Apple’s CEOs throughout its history

Apple was created in 1976 in Palo Alto, California. Since its creation, several people have served as the company’s CEO. It is surprising on the other hand that Steve Jobs was not CEO until 1997 after his return to the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak.

Today in Applesupportphonenumber we bring you a list of the CEOs who have been in charge of the company of the bitten apple along with anecdotes and curiosities about their time in the company.

Michael Scott – 1977 to 1981

To have a good time at Apple, all I needed was a beer and to sign off

Michael was convinced to become the first CEO of the Californian company that had just been born thanks to the investment of $250,000 by Mike Makkula who convinced Michael Scoot to take the reins of the company while the co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were fully dedicated to carry out the future Apple II.

The Apple II was presented and was a resounding success unlike its successor the Apple III that failed miserably. Meanwhile, the Macintosh project whose objective was to create an economic and simple computer began to evolve to think about the continuous cancellations by CEO Michael Scott because he did not see the project as relevant.

On February 25, 1981, Michael Scott stopped being as sane as he used to be years ago. That day known in Apple as the black Wednesday , 40 people were dismissed (being 1000 the employees that formed the company) personally by Michael Scott who in the afternoon after making all the dismissals met with all the remaining employees with a keg of beer and explained them then the reason of the dismissals:

After this Michael Scott was obviously moved from executive management to vice-presidency with his position as CEO being held by Mike Markkula.

Mike Markkula – 1981 to 1983

The CEO who started to displace Steve Jobs

Mike was such a relevant figure in Apple that even its co-founder, Steve Wozniak, stated that Mike Markkula helped Apple’s success more than he did.

In mid-1981, Mike became Apple’s CEO. Early in his tenure as CEO he relieved Steve Jobs of the Lisa team because Jobs was delaying the project due to the continuous changes he was making to the team. After this Steve became interested in the Macintosh team.

In 1983 the computer Lisa was launched which was a profound failure perhaps because of its incredible price of 10,000 dollars. This added to the failure of the Apple III caused Mike Markkula to resign from the executive management of Apple.

With the position of Chief Executive Officer vacant, the name of John Sculley, then Vice President of PepsiCo, began to sound like a candidate. He initially rejected the idea of becoming Apple’s CEO but eventually accepted after a visit from Steve Jobs who convinced him with the question:

John Sculley – 1983 to 1993

He arrived to kick Steve Jobs out and finish sinking Apple

John Sculley came to Apple management with the intention of using his marketing skills to increase computer sales.

Steve Jobs , who was leading the Macintosh team at the time, began to have disagreements with John Sculley due to Jobs’ actions which displeased the Apple board of directors who did not tolerate Steve Jobs’ movements with his team in addition to the delays and cost overruns.

In 1985, Steve Jobs is kicked out of the company he founded after a vote by the board of directors whose votes for him included those of Mike Markkula and John Sculley. As a curiosity, a few years ago John Sculley stated in an interview that the Apple board did not fire Steve Jobs for any other reason than taking engineers after the founding of NeXT by Steve Jobs.

On the other hand John Sculley in 1993 left an Apple that already in the last ones he was looking for new customers.

Michael Spindler – 1993 to 1996

He wanted to raise Apple following the same strategy as Sculley

Michael Spindler (nicknamed “The Diesel”) came to the position of CEO to try and fix the failures caused by Sculley.

During his time he continued John Sculley’s idea of carrying out any kind of project that could bring Apple out of the doldrums. From Apple’s laboratories came digital cameras, consoles, CD players and the famous Newton , a PDA that saw the light almost at the same time that John Sculley left the company and that was also maintained during Michael Spindler’s stage. According to John Sculley, Apple’s investment in the Newton was 100 million dollars.

Among other failures, the Copland operating system also sounded a lot. It was inefficient and was a nightmare for the computers that Apple sold in those days because the operating system was a pile of errors.

No doubt Michael Spindler’s time was doomed to failure because he continued with many of the strategies started by the previous CEO. Finally in 1996 Michael Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio.

Gil Amelio – 1996 to 1997

He saved Apple by buying NeXT and with the purchase Steve Jobs returns to the company

From the company National Semiconductor, like Michael Scott, helped improve Apple’s products with more attractive prices and higher quality . This translated into an increase in sales that led to the need for an operating system for their computers that would fill the gap left by Copland.

To achieve the goal of an ideal operating system for Macintosh, Apple introduced Mac OS 8 after the purchase of NeXT, a company founded by Steve Jobs with some Macintosh team members who followed him after he was kicked out of Apple.

NeXT was bought for $429 million and one year after joining the company’s bite block domain Steve Jobs convinced the board to fire Amelio due to the sharp drop in Apple’s share value.

After this Steve Jobs arrives as interim CEO due to the dismissal of Gil Amelio in 1997.

Steve Jobs – 1997 to 2011

He changed Apple from top to bottom and managed to fix the damage that was

Steve Jobs was appointed interim CEO until a definitive successor is found. In this transition stage Steve Jobs set out to make Apple a strong and stable company as it had been in the past.

In 1998, Apple presented the iMac , a modern and colourful all-in-one that changed the concept that Cupertino’s people had of an all-in-one. This iMac came with a Mac OS 8 which was the biggest leap in Apple’s operating system in 10 years. It was later updated to Mac OS 9, the predecessor of Mac OS X, introduced in 2002 and since then it has been the basis of Apple’s operating systems until today.

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod that revolutionized the way music was listened to with a strong marketing campaign that began to raise Apple’s name. Three years later after the piracy scandals with services such as Napster, iTunes is launched, the well-known music store with songs starting at 99 cents.

Before the iPhone, Apple tried to carve out a niche for itself in mobile telephony with a shell mobile created in conjunction with Motorola that was not very successful. Steve Jobs disappointed gave a radical change and in 2007 presented the iPhone.

During this time Apple bet a lot on laptops and desktops. As a result of this bet we have the Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air. In the section of desktop computers there are the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini.

The iPad arrived in 2010 and although it wasn’t the first tablet on the market, it created a new market in which many companies would later join together to try and grab a piece of the pie. Later came the Macbook Pro Retina in 2012 and the rest of the story is already known.

In October 2011 , months after Steve Jobs took a back seat to his illness and left Tim Cook in charge while he was away, Jobs’ death due to pancreatic cancer is announced.

Tim Cook – 2011 to present

It followed the course set by Jobs but with a touch of its own that we already notice in the products

Tim Cook was, so to speak, Jobs’s go-to guy. During the times when Steve had to leave Apple in the background, Tim Cook was always the man to run the company.

The post-Steve Jobs era at Apple was feared because it was thought they couldn’t survive without the creative mind of Steve Jobs. Tim Cook did his best to make the company bigger and he certainly did. Today Apple is the most valuable company in the world with a capital that exceeds 200 billion dollars. Its employees total more than 100 thousand and the Apple stores are more than 400.

For now Tim Cook has only presented one product category that was made entirely since he is CEO , we are talking about the Apple Watch. The other products he has presented are evolutions of the categories already created during the Jobs stage, such as the iPhone or the iPad.

The future of Apple is still in the hands of Tim Cook and there is no indication that that will change who although who knows, maybe one day we will see Jony Ive as CEO of the company.