Steve Jobs Announcement

CUPERTINO, Calif. - October 8, 1997 - Apple Computer Inc. today announced that every employee but Steve Jobs will be leaving the company.

"Although disappointing, this attrition still fits well into the three year plan for turning around Apple" said Steve Jobs, President and CEO of Apple.

In a move that surprised even the most skeptical of analysts over 12,000 employees have given notice that this will be their last week at Apple Computer. 74% of the employees claimed "Pursuing other opportunities as their reason for leaving. Other popular responses were:

"Want to spend more time with my family", "It has been a long fun road, but it is time for me to move on", and, "When the cost cutting taskforce catered lunches went from hot meals to bag lunches, I knew it was time to leave."

"In their tenure at Apple, everyone greatly improved Apple's business activities", said Mr. Jobs, acting VP of Human Resources. "The employees were an integral part of our success, and they will be missed. However, I do not see this will in any way change our strategy." Upon further reflection, Steve did comment that this would make the expected 30-35% layoff plan much easier to implement.

A spokesperson for Apple, sounding like a muffled Jobs, said there would be a further consolidation of operations. Manufacturing would be shut down for a short period of time while new floor workers were trained.

Steve was sighted at Apple's Singapore factory trying to get a torque wrench to work. In addition, the spokesperson said all of Apple Marketing, Sales, Quality, and R&D would be placed under one global organization. Steve Jobs will be acting in this role until a suitable candidate is identified.

Calls into Apple's SOS support line and main number were answered by an automated system saying the line would be picked up in less than 26 hours. When the line did finally pick up we were surprised to finally have a chance to speak with Steve in person. He quickly apologized for any inconvenience and blamed the delay on what he described as a WinTel driven phone interface that took him hours to understand.

Apple's new executive management team, which did consist of 10 members will be reduced to five. They are: Steve Jobs - CEO and President, Steve Jobs - Acting VP of Operations, Steve Jobs - Acting Senior VP of Marketing, Steve Jobs - Acting VP of Human Resources and Steve Jobs - Acting CTO/COO/CAO/CFO. Steve Jobs was not available for comment.

Apple's stock was off 3/8 to 1/38 in light trading Friday. Asked if he was worried about a hostile takeover, Acting CFO Jobs said, "Don't worry, we still have $87,000 in cash and checks in the checkbook. I'm not expecting a problem until we achieve long term profitability."

Mr. Jobs did revise his predicition on achieving profitability from Q497 to early next quarter. He cited dramatically lower operating costs and salaries as major reasons for the new found optimism.