Batch of 11 new vintage Steve Jobs pictures
12 Apr 2011 | in Steve Jobs history, Updates/Announcements
With the thousands of pictures of Steve Jobs that are already present on the website, you might think that it’s impossible for me to find new ones apart from new Apple events and iAppearances of iSteve.
But no (and frankly it continues to amaze me) — I sometimes stumble across never-seen-(by-me)-before pictures of Steve’s past, and it’s always refreshing.
Today is one of those occasions:
- the first two pics are from the very early days of Apple, 1976. They’re of very fine quality, for once.
- the following two from 1980 and 1981
- the following pic with John Sculley and Woz, is from the Apple IIc introduction event in February 1984. It is not new but of better quality than the previous version, and it’s corrected, as I had (like many) misattributed it to the Mac introduction of January 24
- the following two are from the April 24 1984 Apple event (anyone knows what that one was?)
- the following is from Apple’s Annual Shareholders Meeting of 1985
- the following from 1988
- the second to last is very interesting. I only had a cropped version of it. This is the only pic I’ve found of Steve with Peter Van Cuylenburg, who was brought in as COO of NeXT by investor Canon in 1992. He only stayed one year, as he betrayed Steve (even worse than Sculley) by calling up Sun’s Scott McNealy to have him buy NeXT and install him as CEO. It was a professionally fatal blow to Steve.
- the last pic is from Steve’s ‘wildest wilderness year’, 1994. He is posing with Morgan Stanley execs for a NYT article about NeXTSTEP. I have found the article in the NYT archive, have a look at it, it’s pretty telling that Steve is barely mentioned in there…
The comment relating to my “betrayal” of Steve by calling Scott McNealy is incorrect, although it bears a resemblance to something that did happen and has clearly been “rumored” incorrectly. What happened is that Scott made a call to me to see if there would be any interest in a relationship between NeXT and Sun. I brokered a meeting with him and Steve at Steve’s home in Palo Alto. The three of us met there and discussed alternatives, but Scott and Steve did not agree on possible approaches. There was not, at any time, a discussion about me replacing Steve as CEO. Several months later I left NeXT because, after the transition to a pure software company, there was no meaningful role for a COO. Please remove the incorrect reference from your blog. Also, please feel free to verify what I’ve said with any sources you may have, provided they are actually knowledgeable and honest.
Peter van Cuylenburg