Briefly: Steve Jobs' 1996 return to Apple depicted in rare set of photos

By AppleInsider Staff

The photos were taken on Dec. 20, 1996, the night when late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company he created after being forced out by the board eleven years earlier.


Steve Jobs (right) with then-CEO Gil Amelio. | Source: Tim Holmes

Captured by Mac OS Evangelist Tim Holmes on an Apple QuickTake camera and posted to Flickr (via Daring Fireball), the photos show Jobs' first night back at Apple HQ, which took place at the company's theater dubbed the Town Hall.

"I called Mitch, my wife who also worked there at the time, and told her meet me there," Holmes recalls. "We had no idea what was about to happen…"

Jobs claimed he was ousted from Apple by former Apple CEO John Sculley, who supposedly conspired with the company's board to force the tech guru out after the two had a "falling out." Sculley in 2012 said he never fired Jobs, and admitted that his positioning as Apple chief executive was a "big mistake."

In a commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, Jobs said that "getting fired" from Apple was "the best thing that could have ever happened" to him.