Steve Jobs

clever maneuver,” Jobs recalled, still smarting thirty-five years later. “It was at the executive committee meeting, and he said, ‘It’s me or Steve, who do you vote for?’ He set the whole thing up so that you’d kind of have to be an idiot to vote for me.”
    Suddenly the frozen onlookers began to squirm. Del Yocam had to go first. He said he loved Jobs, wanted him to continue to play some role in the company, but he worked up the nerve to conclude, with Jobs staring at him, that he “respected” Sculley and would support him to run the company. Eisenstat faced Jobs directly and said much the same thing: He liked Jobs but was supporting Sculley. Regis McKenna, who sat in on senior staff meetings as an outside consultant, was more direct. He looked at Jobs and told him he was not yet ready to run the company, something he had told him before. Others sided with Sculley as well. For Bill Campbell, it was particularly tough. He was fond of Jobs and didn’t particularly like Sculley. His voice quavered a bit as he told Jobs he had decided to support Sculley, and he urged the two of them to work it out and find some role for Jobs to play in the company. “You can’t let Steve leave this company,” he told Sculley.
    Jobs looked shattered. “I guess I know where things stand,” he said, and bolted out of the room. No one followed.
    He went back to his office, gathered his longtime loyalists on the Macintosh staff, and started to cry. He would have to leave Apple, he said. As he started to walk out the door, Debi Coleman restrained him. She and the others urged him to settle down and not do anything hasty. He should take the weekend to regroup. Perhaps there was a way to prevent the company from being torn apart.
    Sculley was devastated by his victory. Like a wounded warrior, he retreated to Eisenstat’s office and asked the corporate counsel to go for a ride. When they got into Eisenstat’s Porsche, Sculley lamented, “I don’t know whether I can go through with this.” When Eisenstat asked what he meant, Sculley responded, “I think I’m going to resign.”
    “You can’t,” Eisenstat protested. “Apple will fall apart.”
    “I’m going to resign,” Sculley declared. “I don’t think I’m right for the company.”
    “I think you’re copping out,” Eisenstat replied. “You’ve got to stand up to him.” Then he drove Sculley home.
    Sculley’s wife was surprised to see him back in the middle of the day. “I’ve failed,” he said to her forlornly. She was a volatile woman who had never liked Jobs or appreciated her husband’s infatuation with him. So when she heard what had happened, she jumped into her car and sped over to Jobs’s office. Informed that he had gone to the Good Earth restaurant, she marched over there and confronted him in the parking lot as he was coming out with loyalists on his Macintosh team.
    “Steve, can I talk to you?” she said. His jaw dropped. “Do you have any idea what a privilege it has been even to know someone as fine as John Sculley?” she demanded. He averted his gaze. “Can’t you look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you?” she asked. But when Jobs did so—giving her his practiced, unblinking stare—she recoiled. “Never mind, don’t look at me,” she said. “When I look into most people’s eyes, I see a soul. When I look into your eyes, I see a bottomless pit, an empty hole, a dead zone.” Then she walked away.
    Saturday, May 25:
Mike Murray drove to Jobs’s house in Woodside to offer some advice: He should consider accepting the role of being a new product visionary, starting AppleLabs, and getting away from headquarters. Jobs seemed willing to consider it. But first he would have to restore peace with Sculley. So he picked up the telephone and surprised Sculley with an olive branch. Could they meet the following afternoon, Jobs asked, and take a walk together in the hills above Stanford University. They had walked there in the past, in happier times, and maybe on such a walk they could work things out.
    Jobs did not know that Sculley had told Eisenstat he wanted to quit, but by then it didn’t matter. Overnight, he had changed his mind and decided to stay. Despite the blowup the day before, he was still eager for Jobs to like him. So he agreed to meet the next afternoon.
    If Jobs was prepping for conciliation, it didn’t show in the choice of movie he wanted to see with Murray that night. He picked
Patton
, the epic of the