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The End Of Innocence At Apple

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by Megan Barnett
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Apr 24 2009 11:25am EDT

The End of Innocence at Apple

It seems unthinkable today — but more than two decades ago, when personal computers were still new and everybody listened to music on a Walkman, Steve Jobs was cast out of Apple. The year was 1985. IBM and Microsoft dominated the world of computing. The revolutionary Macintosh, launched with such fanfare just a year earlier, appeared to be foundering. And Jobs, the guiding force at Apple from the beginning, seemed not just expendable but a threat to the company he’d built. In West of Eden — a national best-seller when it was first published in 1989, now updated in a new edition available on Amazon — Wired contributing editor Frank Rose tells how it went down. In an essay excerpted from the introduction to the new edition, Rose recalls the downward spiral Apple fell into after Jobs was dismissed and ultimately how Jobs could be the fall guy one decade and Apple's savior the next.  

Read the essay here.

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