Apple Never Fired Steve Jobs, He Left On His Own: Wozniak

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Apple ex-CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs once left (or was fired from) the company, and there are a lot of speculations on the reasons for his exit. Putting an end to them, co-founder Steve Wozniak wrote in a post on Facebook that Jobs left the company on his own and nobody (then-CEO John Sculley) asked him to quit. He added that Jobs could not face the fact that the Macintosh was a failure and “left out of his feeling of greatness, and embarrassment about not having achieved it,” Wozniak said.

Jobs fired from Apple?

A movie on Jobs’ life called Steve Jobs will be released in theaters next month. This film has become a topic of discussion, and Wozniak’s comment is a part of it. Praising the film, Wozniak said that since the release of the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley in 1999, this is the best adaptation of Jobs’s life and Apple.

What made Jobs leave Apple could never be known as different insiders have had different tales to tell over the years. While addressing students at Stanford, a completely different point of view was offered by Jobs himself in 2005.

“We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired,” Jobs said. Explaining why he got fired from the company he co-created, Jobs said that as Apple grew, he felt the need to hire someone talented to support him in running the company. Until the time he left they shared similar visions so everything was fine, but after a year or so, their visions started diverging, and it led to a falling out eventually. Even the board of directors supported the other person, “So at 30 I was out,” Jobs said.

Sculley version similar to Wozniak’s

Sculley disputes Jobs’ version of events, and his version is very similar Wozniak’s. In an interview earlier this year, Sculley said, “It was after making the pitches [regarding Macintosh Office] that the Apple board asked Steve to step down from the Macintosh division for being too disruptive in the organization.” Sculley told the interviewers that Apple never fired Steve, but rather he took a sabbatical and remained chairman of the board meanwhile.

The movie Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender and penned by Aaron Sorkin, will premiere at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 3.

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