April 1, 1990

JEAN-LOUIS Gassee, the recently deposed head of Apple Products, may be having the best April Fool’s joke of all on colleagues who survived the latest tolling of the bell at Apple Computer.

The winds of change can blow cold on executives who are forced out of the fold, and certainly press reports out of Apple since Gassee resigned are evidence of the fact that corporations do like to rewrite history.

In a quote that’s already gone into the history books, Apple’s new No. 2 exec, chief operating officer Mike Spindler, crowed, “This place has no room for prima donnas anymore” to reporters and analysts after Apple’s recent introduction of the new Macintosh IIfx.

The statement was printed far and wide, but reports failed to point out some of its obvious ironies.
For one, the IIfx which Spindler proudly introduced sprang from the loins of Gassees fertile Apple Products group. It’s been widely hailed as Apple’s most powerful computer to date — “wicked fast,” a company T-shirt proclaims.

Doesn’t it seem strange that such a computer could come from a group of engineers who thought their boss was a prima donna? Engineers hate prima donnas, even though they often have to suffer them. But would they throw a rally — as they did for Gassee, attended by some 200 people, including high-level product managers — for someone they thought unsufferable?

In addition, at the end of fiscal 1989, Gassee received from chairman Sculley the largest bonus (and best performance review) of the entire executive staff. “John pronounced himself quite happy with my performance and the support I gave him, and I was very happy to see him pleased,” says Gassee. “That’s the record.”

Also for the record, Gassee dismisses the prima donna comment. “I do not believe Mike ever said that,” he says. “That’s not like him. I cannot believe that he would in any way, or at any time, drift away from a statesmanlike or CEO-like posture on past or present officers of the corporation. So I choose not to believe it.”

But of course, Spindler did make the comment, and one can only hope that it isn’t evidence of more “yes-manship” in Apple’s executive suite. Gassee is well known inside Apple as virtually the only person who would say the “N” word — no — to chairman John Sculley. Such ability is critical now that Sculley is responsible for giving the green light to future Apple projects.

Though Gassee is circumspect about what really happened at Apple (“you can always ask me about my frustrations, but I want peace”), he is, as they say, cruising.

“I think I’ve found, with much effort, a non-sexual metaphor to describe how I feel now,” says Gassee, now famous for his anatomically correct analogies. “You go into a fine restaurant in Paris, you open the menu — just at the moment you open the menu, what is your state of mind? You’re overwhelmed. Wow! There are so many things to choose!”

But Gassee is certain he wants to run the show. “I like to take care of all aspects of a situation, from engineering to marketing, and it’s probably a good time to do that myself,” he says. What makes him “drool,” he says, is “the way personal computers interact with databases, with mail .Ž.Ž. and with worldwide networks. I think there is something to do (there).”

But he’s not in a hurry. Right now he’s spending time learning Japanese at Berlitz and talking to European venture capitalists. “I’ve observed that European and Japanese investors tend to look to a little bit longer-term horizon,” he says. “Given the things I might have in mind, I will probably look forward to people who are in it for the longer terms rather than the shorter term.”

I hope Mike Spindler, and others who survived the latest sweep of the scythe, think about Gassee the Prima Donna every now and again in 1990, while they’re sweating blood trying to live up to the formidable quarterly expectations of Apple’s board and shareholders.

Call Gassee French, or flamboyant, or arrogant, or a prima donna — even an arrogant, flamboyant French prima donna. But the world is stretched out at his feet, time is on his side, and right now he can do anything he darn well pleases.

“Most of the time my brains work independently of me, and right now they’re spewing ideas,” he says. “When you are no longer focused (as you ought to be) on a wonderful job, such as the one I had, it changes your perspectives, your patterns of thinking. You meet different people, or you meet the same people on a different footing. It’s great. It’s really amazing.”