Steve Jobs: Triumph at Apple Steve Jobs was the only man in the whole world who could have saved Apple in 1997, and Apple needed to be saved. The company was successively mismanaged and was failing. Without going into the gory details, Apple's products had deteriorated, its marketing was dreadful, and its finances would have collapsed had it not been for CFO Fred Anderson's work. Apple went shopping for a new operating system in a desperate attempt to remain relevant in the world of Windows 95. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple's then CEO, Amelio, engineered the purchase of NeXT in December 1996 for the startlingly high price of $429 million in cash and stock. It was obvious to any sentient being that Amelio was not the man to save it. Michael Dell said it should be liquidated. Did Steve really want to put himself through what was needed to fix this company? There are two reasons that only Steve Jobs could have saved Apple in 1997. First, Jobs persuaded Bill Gates to continue supporting Apple by announcing a five-year commitment to writing software, specifically Office for the Mac. Jobs also convinced Gates to invest $150 million in nonvoting shares of Apple. Amelio had attempted to negotiate a similar arrangement with Gates and had failed. Second, Steve was able to endow the work of others with meaning as no one else at Apple could. Fred Anderson, who was hired as chief financial officer in 1996 and did yeoman work keeping Apple afloat financially despite its declining sales, said Steve "understood the soul of Apple. We needed a spiritual leader that could bring Apple back as a great product and marketing company. So we had to have Steve." They got Steve. Amelio was summarily ousted on September 16, 1997. He wrote, "I had, along with many others... been trapped by the charisma and boldness of this unusual man." Steve became "interim" CEO, a title he held for three years.. The "interim" was dropped in 2000. In the years from 1997 to his death in 2011, Steve became an icon of the business world-the man who defined charisma in the context of enterprise. Four reasons stand out: the creation of Apple Retail, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. In order to transform Apple into the vehicle to fulfill his ambition, Jobs had to whip the company into shape. His goal was not only to make a dent in the universe but also perhaps, in the far-off and unimaginable future, to put himself on par with Bill Gates.