Chapter 41 the honeymoon

Markkula eventually persuaded Sculley to accept a $500,000 salary and an equal bonus, and Sculley arrived in California just in time for the May 1983 Apple executives vacation at Pajaro Dunes.Even though he brought only one dark suit and left the rest at home in Greenwich, it was still difficult to adjust to the relaxed atmosphere at Apple.In the front of the conference room, Jobs was sitting on the floor, cross-legged and barefoot, absently playing with his toes.Sculley tried to come up with a plan; they would discuss how to differentiate their products—the Apple II, Apple III, Lisa, and Mac—and whether the company should be organized around product lines, markets, or functions.As a result, the discussion slowly turned into an event of free exchange of views, complaints and debates.

At one point, Jobs attacked the Lisa project team, saying they had built a failed product. "Yeah," someone shot back, "Your Macintosh hasn't been released yet! Why don't you wait until your own product comes out to criticize people?" Sculley was taken aback.At PepsiCo, no one would argue with the chairman of the board like that. "Then people started blaming Steve." It reminded Sculley of a joke he once heard from an Apple ad salesman: "What's the difference between an Apple and the Boy Scouts? The answer is that the Boy Scouts have grown-ups." keep it."

While everyone was arguing, there was a small earthquake and the house started rumbling. "Get to the beach," someone yelled.So everyone rushed out the door and ran to the beach.Then someone shouted that the last earthquake caused a tsunami.So everyone turned around and ran back. “Indecision, clashes of opinion, natural disasters, these were harbingers of what was to come,” Sculley said later. The competition between different product teams is cruel, but it also has a happy side, such as the farce caused by the pirate flag.Jobs boasted that his Macintosh team worked 90-hour weeks, and Debbie Coleman made a number of hooded sweatshirts sporting the words: "I love 90-hour weeks!" which prompted the Lisa team to A few shirts were made in response that read: "Work 70 hours a week, but the product is on the market." The Apple II team was boring, but profitable, so they wrote: "Work 60 hours a week - earn a living Lisa and Mac." Jobs contemptuously referred to the Apple II team as "Clydesdales," but he knew a harrowing truth in his heart: the people who really pulled Apple These are the only pack horses for this carriage.

One Saturday morning, Jobs invited Sculley and his wife, Leezy, to his home for breakfast.He was living in a beautiful but unassuming Tudor house in Los Gatos with his girlfriend, Barbara Yasinski, an intelligent, modest, Regis McKenna employee. A reserved and beautiful woman.Liz brought a skillet and made a vegetarian omelet (Jobs was slowly moving away from veganism by then). "Sorry, there isn't a lot of furniture in the house," Jobs apologized. "I haven't gotten around to buying furniture yet." He has always had this habit: He has strict standards for craftsmanship and a Spartan style. Its simplicity makes him reluctant to buy any furniture that he doesn't like.He has a Tiffany lamp, an antique dining table and a laserdisc connected to a Sony Trinitron TV, but the sofa and chairs are replaced by foam cushions.Sculley smiled, mistakenly thinking that it was similar to his “crazy, Spartan life in a messy New York City apartment” early in his career.

Jobs confessed to Sculley that he thought he would die when he was young, so he needed to achieve something as soon as possible to make his name in Silicon Valley history. "Our time on Earth is short," Jobs told Sculley that morning, sitting around the table, "and we may only have a chance to do a few really great things and do them well. None of us Knowing how long I'm going to live, I don't know, but I feel like I have to achieve more while I'm young." During the first few months of their friendship, Jobs and Sculley talked many times a day. "Steve and I became confidantes, like forever companions," Sculley said. "We tended to say half a sentence or half a phrase." Jobs kept courting Sculley.Every time he visited Sculley to discuss some issues with him, he would say "you are the only one who understands".They tell each other how much fun it is to work together, when in fact they say it too often, worryingly often.At every opportunity Sculley looked for parallels with Jobs and pointed them out:

This is a form of self-deception that will lead to disaster sooner or later.Jobs noticed this early on. "We have different worldviews, different outlooks on life, different values," Jobs said. "I started to realize this after he came for a few months. He is not a fast learner, and the people he wants to promote are often stupid people. .” Jobs knew, however, that he could manipulate Sculley by reinforcing his belief that the two were similar.And the more he manipulated Sculley, the more he looked down on Sculley. Some astute bystanders on the Mac team, such as Joanna Hoffman, quickly realized what was happening and anticipated that it would intensify the inevitable rupture between Jobs and Sculley. . "Steve made Sculley feel great," she said. "Sculley had never felt that way before, and he was blown away because Steve added a lot of qualities to him that he didn't have. body. This way Steve confuses Sculley and makes Sculley even more obsessed with Steve. Yet when it finally becomes apparent that Sculley doesn't fit all of these assessments, Steve's reality The distortion field has laid a hidden danger for the outbreak of the incident."

Sculley's enthusiasm, too, finally began to cool.He was trying to run a dysfunctional company, and one of the weaknesses of his management was his desire to please people, a problem that Jobs didn't have.Simply put, Sculley was a very polite guy and Jobs was not.So he cringes when he sees Jobs being rude to his colleagues. "We'd go to the Mac project building at 11 p.m.," he recalls, "and they'd show him the code. Sometimes he wouldn't even look at it, just throw it back at them. I'd ask He, how do you put people down like that? He'll say, 'I know they can do better.'" Sculley tried to teach him. "You have to learn to control your emotions," he once said to Jobs.Jobs agreed, but he was born unable to filter his emotions.

Sculley came to believe that Jobs' mercurial personality and erratic attitude towards people were deeply ingrained in his psychological makeup, perhaps reflecting a slight polarization in his personality.Jobs' mood swings were wild.Sometimes he was ecstatic, and other times he was depressed.Sometimes he would start berating people without warning, and Sculley had to calm him down. "In 20 minutes, I'll get another call to come over because Steve's throwing a tantrum again," he said. The first time they had a major disagreement was over the price of the Macintosh.According to the original idea, the price of the Macintosh would be $1,000, but Jobs made changes to the design and increased the cost, so he adjusted the planned price to $1,995.However, when Jobs and Sculley started planning for the big launch and marketing effort, Sculley decided they needed to raise the price by another $500.For him, marketing costs need to be factored into the selling price like any other production cost.Jobs angrily refused. "It's going to destroy all of our ideas," he said. "I want it to be a revolution, not trying to squeeze a profit." Sculley said it was an easy choice: He could keep the $1,995 price tag, or You can use the marketing budget to hold a grand product launch, you can only choose one of the two.

"The bad news," Jobs told Herzfeld and the other engineers, "is that Sculley insisted that we raise the price of the Mac from $1,995 to $2,495." The engineers were, of course, shocked.Herzfeld pointed out that the Mac was designed for people like themselves, and that pricing it too high would "contrary" to their position.So Jobs promised them; "Don't worry, I won't let him succeed!" But in the end Sculley won.Although it has been 25 years since the incident, when Jobs recalled the decision at the time, he was still very angry. "That was the main reason for the decline in sales of the Macintosh, and then Microsoft was able to capture the market," he said.This decision made him feel that he was losing control of his product and company, which was as dangerous as cornering the tiger.