This Was Steve Jobs’s Most Important Observation When He Returned to Apple. It Changed Everything
It had nothing to do with the products
By Jason Aten
The return of Steve Jobs to the role of Apple’s CEO in 1997, it could be argued, was one of the most important moments in the history of business. At the time, it would have been hard to foresee just how influential Apple would become. It’s not an overstatement to say the company was in pretty rough shape.
It was in 1997 that Jobs stood onstage and told the company’s loyal fans that the company had taken a $150 million investment from Microsoft, one of its most fierce rivals. It was the same year that Dell’s CEO, Michael Dell, said that if he were leading the company, he would shut it down and give the money back to shareholders.
Obviously, Jobs didn’t shut the company down. Instead, he began working on a string of iconic products like the iMac, the iPod, and what would become macOS X.
But there was another move Jobs made in that first year back at Apple that might have been just as important. For context, this came up during the testimony of the current CEO, Tim Cook, in the trial over Epic’s lawsuit against Apple.
