February 19, 1981: Jef Writes a Career Limiting Memo

The Macintosh was originally conceived and code-named by Jef Raskin. Jef tried to keep the project under the radar but when Steve Jobs, after being frozen out of the LISA project, needed something to do, the Macintosh skunk works came to his attention. The upper management at Apple was happy with the development; anything that would keep Steve Jobs from meddling in important projects was considered a good thing.

Jef was initially enthusiastic with the attention, thinking Jobs' stroke would save the project from cancellation and that Steve would focus solely on the hardware. The honeymoon was short-lived and the friction created by the two differing visions of Jobs and Raskin became too much for Jef to bear. Rather than giving Steve a good stomping in the parking lot, Jef decided to air his grievances in the most corporate of manners: with a memo. The memo read like a low rent gossip column but Mr. Raskins' frustration was clear. Selected highlights included:

Jobs regularly misses appointments
He acts without thinking and with bad judgment
He interrupts and doesn't listen
Jobs is often irresponsible and inconsiderate
He is a bad manager of software products.

Every criticism may have been true and each charge was likely documentable, but when you try to take on the cofounder, a hard road lies ahead. The journey was too much for Jef to bear and he eventually resigned after being coerced into a leave of absence by Steve Jobs. Before Mr. Raskin left he did manage to get his criticism of Steve admitted to the corporate record in the form of a no-longer secret memo written on February 19, 1981.