How does the person who pushed Steve Jobs from Apple live at the age of 80?
In Apple history, John Sculley is often mentioned as the person who defeated Steve Jobs in the power struggle in 1985, causing the co-founder to lose his executive authority and leave the company a few months later.
Sculley repeatedly affirmed that he did not directly fire Jobs. However, the board's decision at that time pushed the Apple founder out of the center of power. The breakup also ended the once very close friendship between the two.
More than 40 years after this event, Sculley has stepped away from running the business. However, the relationship with Steve Jobs is still the most repeated story in the former Apple CEO's career.
The relationship of John Sculley and Steve Jobs
John Sculley joined Apple in 1983. Before that, he was President of Pepsi-Cola, famous for his marketing prowess and the "Pepsi Challenge" campaign. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs is only 28 years old, has a great vision for the product but has not been trusted by the board of directors to be assigned the CEO position.
Jobs went directly to Sculley and convinced him with the famous question: do you want to continue "selling sugary drinks" or change the world with him?
Sculley agreed to come to Apple with the expectation of combining his marketing abilities with Jobs' creativity. According to the former CEO, the two spent many months getting to know each other, then worked almost 7 days a week. He described Jobs as a very close friend.
The two of them went through the period when Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984 and made the famous "1984" advertisement at the Super Bowl. However, behind the seemingly perfect combination lies a potentially conflicting power structure.
Jobs is both Chairman of the Board of Directors, major shareholder, and directly runs the Macintosh division. Sculley holds the CEO position but must manage a founder with special influence over products and personnel.
Conflicts gradually appeared around business strategy, Macintosh selling price, advertising budget and how the company was run. Jobs wanted to reduce the price of the machine, shifting more resources from the Apple II to the Macintosh. Sculley objected because he believed that the Apple II was still the product that generated most of the company's cash flow.
The controversy quickly turned into a fight for control of Apple. In April 1985, Sculley told the board that he could not continue as CEO if Jobs remained in charge of the Macintosh division.
The board sided with Sculley and scaled back Jobs' role. The Apple founder then tried to campaign to remove the CEO but was unsuccessful.
Jobs was not fired in a procedural sense. He still holds the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors but no longer has substantive executive power. In September 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT.
Therefore, saying that Sculley directly "fired Steve Jobs" is not entirely accurate. However, he put the board before the choice between the two and won, making Jobs' departure from the company almost inevitable.
What does John Sculley say about Steve Jobs, what is he doing now?
The power struggle not only ended the working relationship but also broke the friendship between Jobs and Sculley.
In a 2015 interview, Sculley admitted Jobs never forgave him. The two were also unable to restore their relationship before the Apple founder passed away in 2011.
Looking back decades later, Sculley believes that pushing a founder out of their own business was a serious mistake. Coming from a traditional corporate environment, he did not fully understand the beliefs, passion and special vision of the business founders.
Sculley also regretted that he and Jobs did not have the opportunity to meet again to regain even a part of their old friendship.
However, Sculley's tenure at Apple is not only tied to this confrontation. He continued to serve as CEO for eight years after Jobs left, bringing his total time leading the company to a decade.
In 1993, Apple's profits were only $86 million, compared to $530 million a year earlier. In June 1993, Sculley left the CEO position under pressure from the board of directors. Four months later, he continued to leave his position as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
After leaving Apple, Sculley became an investor, advisor and entrepreneur, joining many companies in the fields of telecommunications, data, e-commerce, telephony and health care. Businesses associated with him include MetroPCS, Hotwire.com, Obi Worldphone and RxAdvance.
In 2007, Sculley and businessman David Steinberg founded Zeta Global, a company that applies data and artificial intelligence in marketing activities. By June 2025, he left the board of directors but continued to be recognized as co-founder, honorary Vice President and advisor to the board of directors.
At the age of over 80, Sculley no longer directly runs the business but still occasionally appears at technology events. He is interested in artificial intelligence, subscription models and the shift from traditional apps to AI assistants.
Despite a long career after Apple, Sculley still finds it difficult to escape the title "the person who made Steve Jobs leave the company". The boardroom victory in 1985 became a decision he had to explain and regret for much of the rest of his life.