Steve Jobs had been gone for 12 years, there was plenty of culture clash and turf wars. Steve just managed to prevail.

When he returned, the workforce was pampered and attached to projects that weren't going anywhere. Steve removed a number of perks, and killed some of the biggest, most internally popular projects (Newton and OpenDoc come to mind). Lot's of people left.

But Steve came back to Apple as a savvy politician. He managed to get the board of directors in his back pocket, and sell his vision of Apple to the employees. Those that stayed, stayed because they came to believe in his vision, not because he placated them.

I will say this though, I think there's a truth underneath your statement. Apple attracted people who wanted to change the world. The culture may have been different, but there was still a core motivation in Apple employees that came from Steve's original vision of computing.

Minor correction: I wouldn’t call Newton an “internally popular product”. At least, working on Newton I didn’t feel that way. And just before SJ came back, Apple had spun Newton out into a separate company because it wasn’t really fitting in. SJ spun it back in and killed it.

Would love to learn more about Newton - history and/or tech. Any resources on the web or anything interesting you may want to share?

Check the Dylan thread, which was supposed to be the systems language for Newton OS,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106802

Or just reach out for the Newton documentation, scattered about some sites,

https://newtonfaq.com/

http://newtonscript.org/

https://www.newted.org/manuals/

great hn thread, thanks.

Thanks for the correction - I’d entirely forgotten that Newton got spun off!