"I'm sure somewhere in Jobs' head he thinks that if he had been running Apple instead of John Sculley, the Mac could have out-innovated and out-marketed Microsoft through the late eighties and early nineties, and kept Windows from dominating the planet."
Actually I believe this myself. It's hard to say exactly how well he would have done at fending off Microsoft, but it would have been a closer race than it was. Apple seemed totally lost during that period.
I'm sure he thinks he could have done better than Sculley, and it's almost certain he would have. But to cite his oft-cited speech:
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
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An addendum: I wonder how many decisions Jobs made after returning to Apple would have happened if he'd never been fired. Would he have still embraced Microsoft? Would the radically colorful design of the iMacs have happened any earlier, or at all? Would they have switched to Intel? What about the iPod, which was probably the most significant way Apple could introduce non-Mac users to Apple design, making the value proposition of a Mac credible? I wonder if his time away from Apple hadn't made him more sensitive to the importance of media besides software.
Sorry, wanted to add another point but the editing window expired. Basically, I get the sense that the Jobs that got fired was a lot more willing to shake things up when he came back. Whereas it's hard for me to see what Jobs would have done if he'd managed to oust Sculley, aside from killing 3rd party Macs earlier and shrinking the product lineup.
Actually I believe this myself. It's hard to say exactly how well he would have done at fending off Microsoft, but it would have been a closer race than it was. Apple seemed totally lost during that period.