John Sculley Interview
John Sculley (via Hacker News):
What they needed was someone who could keep the Apple II computer, which was a cash machine, commercially alive for three more years because Steve Jobs was still a year away from introducing the Macintosh. In 1983, Apple was outsold by each Atari and Commodore by 2-to-1. The IBM PC had been introduced a year-and-a-half earlier and was gaining momentum.
Keeping the Apple II alive didn't require someone to know much about computer technology, it required someone who knew something about how to market and sell a near end-of-life product.
That's not entirely fair. What they also needed to have done is come up with something like the Apple //gs which offered some of the same capabilities of the Commodore 64 or the Atari systems. I know there was the Apple/// disaster (largerly tied to Steve Jobs as I understand) but it's kind of embarrassing that they were still selling the kind of Apple// in 1983 that they were. The Apple//c (April 84) was actually pretty nice. But honestly it should have been out a year earlier.