在老乔离开苹果后，这家曾经具有强大革新力和创造力的公司，已经毫无创新可言并陷入了停滞不前的状态。乔布斯曾希望苹果成为一家出色的消费品公司，("to become a wonderful consumer products company")将乔布斯赶出苹果的约翰。斯卡利却发表言论称："苹果永远不会是一家消费品公司。" 更甚的是，面对微软，苹果节节败退。这一切都让乔布斯对个人电脑产业沮丧失望不已，(he despaired about the personal computer industry)甚至说出了"台式电脑进入黑暗时代"的话。("The desktop market has entered the dark ages")且让我们看他是如何评价苹果的现状的吧！

Jobs was appalled, and he became angry and contemptuous as Sculley presided over a steady decline in market share for Apple in the early 1990s. "Sculley destroyed Apple by bringing in corrupt people and corrupt values," Jobs later lamented. "They cared about making money-for themselves mainly, and also for Apple-rather than making great products。" He felt that Sculley's drive for profits came at the expense of gaining market share. "Macintosh lost to Microsoft because Sculley insisted on milking all the profits he could get rather than improving the product and making it affordable。"As a result, the profits eventually disappeared. It had taken Microsoft a few years to replicate Macintosh's graphical.user interface, but by 1990 it had come out with Windows 3.0, which began the company's march to dominance in the desktop market. Windows 95, which was released in 1995, became the most successful operating system ever, and Macintosh sales began to collapse。"Microsoft simply ripped off what other people did," Jobs later said. "Apple deserved it. After I left, it didn't invent anything new. The Mac hardly improved. It was a sitting duck for Microsoft."
乔布斯十分震惊。同时他对于20世纪90年代初，苹果在斯卡利的管理下市场份额持续下降变得愈加气愤和蔑视。乔布斯惋叹道："斯卡利给苹果引进了恶劣的人 和低下的价值观，这毁了苹果。他们只顾着让公司赚钱，更多的是让自己赚钱，而非造出上乘的产品。" 乔布斯感到斯卡利对利益的追逐是以市场份额的减少作为代价的。"麦金塔在与微软对决中败下阵来正是因为斯卡利坚持榨取能够得到的每一分利润，却没有想过 改进产品和降低价格。" 结果自然是利润全无。 微软用了好些年来模仿麦金塔的图形用户界面，直到1990年它推出了Windows 3.0系统，从此走上了统领台式电脑市场的征程。1995年发行的Windows95系统成为了有史以来最成功的操作系统，然而麦金塔此时的销量已几近崩 盘。"微软只会抄袭别人的东西。" 乔布斯后来说："但是苹果活该被打败。我离开之后，它再也没发明什么新的东西，Mac操作系统几乎没有任何改进，面对微软，它只能坐以待毙。"