Apple Inc. in 1996 was in a parlous state, having lost the pioneering shine of its initial foray into the personal computer market.
Since Jobs was forced to leave, John Sculley, the man who sold sugary water, had not managed to bring Apple back to its former heights as he had hoped.
During his tenure at Apple, he experimented with the Newton digital assistant and various other computer models.
But the market's response was lukewarm at best; nobody was interested in these cumbersome devices.
Consequently, as the company's sales declined year by year, John Sculley was also compelled to leave Apple in 1993.
Michael Spindler, a veteran at Apple, succeeded him.
He had joined Apple's European division in 1980 and had worked for the company for six months without pay.
This was not because the company was short of cash, but because, at the time, Apple did not know how to transfer funds from California to Belgium.
