Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

Friday, May 24:
Sculley canceled his trip and decided to confront Jobs at the executive staff 
meeting on Friday morning. Jobs arrived late, and he saw that his usual seat next to Sculley, who 
sat at the head of the table, was taken. He sat instead at the far end. He was dressed in a well-
tailored suit and looked energized. Sculley looked pale. He announced that he was dispensing with 
the agenda to confront the issue on everyone’s mind. “It’s come to my attention that you’d like to 
throw me out of the company,” he said, looking directly at Jobs. “I’d like to ask you if that’s true.”
Jobs was not expecting this. But he was never shy about indulging in brutal honesty. His eyes 
narrowed, and he fixed Sculley with his unblinking stare. “I think you’re bad for Apple, and I 
think you’re the wrong person to run the company,” he replied, coldly and slowly. “You really 
should leave this company. You don’t know how to operate and never have.” He accused Sculley 
of not understanding the product development process, and then he added a self-centered swipe: “I 
wanted you here to help me grow, and you’ve been ineffective in helping me.”
As the rest of the room sat frozen, Sculley finally lost his temper. A childhood stutter that had 
not afflicted him for twenty years started 
to return. “I don’t trust you, and I won’t tolerate a lack of trust,” he stammered. When Jobs 
claimed that he would be better than Sculley at running the company, Sculley took a gamble. He 
decided to poll the room on that question. “He pulled off this 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.