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Longtime Apple advisor, board member Bill Campbell dies at 75

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Bill Campbell, a legendary figure in Silicon Valley and a major part of Apple's history, has succumbed to cancer and passed away on Monday at the age of 75.

Campbell first joined Apple in 1983 as vice president of marketing. He left the company for a number of years — during which he built Intuit into a global financial force — until joining the board of directors following Steve Jobs's return in 1997.

Serving until 2014, Campbell was the longest-tenured director in Apple's history. He was replaced in July of that year with BlackRock partner Susan Wagner.

Campbell's death was first noted by Re/code.

Campbell was known as "the coach," as much for his position as an advisor to modern-day Silicon Valley luminaries as for the fact that he coached the Columbia University football team — his alma mater — in the mid-1970s. He had a particularly close relationship with Jobs until the Apple co-founder's own death in 2011.

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"I watched him emerge as a CEO in real time," Campbell said of his time with Jobs. "I had a continuum with him. I watched him when he was general manager of the Mac division and when he went off and started NeXT. I watched Steve go from being a creative entrepreneur to a guy who had to run a business."



16 Comments

APPLEsider 9 Years · 6 comments

Apple lost one more great person .....RIP  :(

emoeller 18 Years · 590 comments

I never could figure out why this Apple Board member and founder of Intuit wouldn't allow his software to be compatible with Apple products.  

4 Likes · 0 Dislikes
sevenfeet 17 Years · 471 comments

I had the good fortune to meet Coach Campbell back in December 1985 when I was in college.  I was on the Yale basketball team and we were playing at Stanford for a Christmas basketball tournament which Apple sponsored.  Apple threw a party on the Cupertino campus for the teams which featured many Apple executives including Bill Campbell, who was Apple's national sales director at the time.  Steve Jobs had been ousted by that time and Apple hadn't been doing well in 1985 since the Mac 512K hadn't sold well (that would change in 1986 when the Mac Plus was introduced).  But Coach Campbell was very gracious and engaging to our group and I never forgot the meeting ( I still have his old business card).  We had a lot of fun joking about his coaching stint at Columbia which was terrible....he once held the dubious record of having the longest losing streak in Division I football at four years.  His career change to the top echelons of business was extraordinary.  And I would later join Apple as my first job out of college in 1988.

Bill Campbell would eventually depart Apple to run Intuit and then be its Chairman for decades.  When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, so did Bill Campbell on Apple's board as one of Steve Jobs most trusted advisors, friend and mentor.  And many of the decisions that guided Apple through the post 1997 Apple era had his fingerprints on them.

Rest in peace, Coach.

6 Likes · 0 Dislikes
loquitur 9 Years · 139 comments

emoeller said:
I never could figure out why this Apple Board member and founder of Intuit wouldn't allow his software to be compatible with Apple products.  

By this, you surely don't mean Turbotax, which many have used for years on a Mac, especially on days like today.