Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
August 1985 was the month Steve Jobs lost Apple. Not the company he would eventually return to and transform into the most valuable corporation in American history — but his Apple, the one he had co-founded in a garage in 1976 and built into a publicly traded technology company that had defined the personal computing era. The boardroom struggle that Fortune documented in this issue had been building since early 1985, when the Macintosh — the machine Jobs had staked his reputation on — was underperforming against sales projections and internal tensions between Jobs and CEO John Sculley had become irreconcilable. In April, Apple's board sided with Sculley. By May, Jobs had been stripped of his operational responsibilities. This August 5 issue captured that fall in real time, at the precise moment when the outcome was no longer speculative but not yet fully digested by the business press. Collectors researching Steve Jobs' documented presence in vintage magazines consistently treat this issue as one of the essential primary documents — a contemporary account of the event that Jobs himself would later describe as one of the most painful of his life, and which set in motion the twelve-year exile that preceded his return to Apple in 1997.
The framing Fortune chose — "The Fall of Steve Jobs" — was pointed and deliberate. Jobs was thirty years old. He had been on the cover of magazines since his mid-twenties, already mythologized as the visionary face of the personal computing revolution. Fortune's characterization of his removal as a "fall" carried classical resonance, framing a business story as something closer to a tragedy of hubris and succession. The article's specific focus on the relationship between Jobs and John Sculley is historically significant: Sculley had been recruited from PepsiCo by Jobs himself in 1983, famously persuaded with the line "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" That the man Jobs brought in to run the company would become the instrument of his removal gave the story a dramatic irony that Fortune was well-positioned to document. The broader Fortune magazine archive from this period represents one of the most complete running records of American technology and business history available in original print form, and this issue sits near the top of any serious researcher's list.
The secondary feature on NBC's resurgence adds a separate layer of cultural value that collectors of 1980s media history will appreciate. By 1985, NBC had reversed years of third-place ratings finishes on the strength of The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and Cheers, reclaiming both audience dominance and advertising profitability in a television landscape on the verge of being fundamentally disrupted by cable. That Fortune chose to pair a story about a technology company's leadership crisis with a story about a broadcast network's commercial revival in the same issue reflects the particular editorial intelligence of the magazine — two industries, both at inflection points, documented side by side in the summer of 1985.
About the Publication
Fortune was founded in 1930 by Henry Luce as a prestige business magazine aimed at corporate executives, investors, and the educated professional class. By the 1980s it had established itself as one of the two or three most authoritative voices in American business journalism, known for its long-form investigative features, its rigorous financial analysis, and its influential annual rankings — most notably the Fortune 500. Its coverage of the technology industry during the 1980s is now understood as a primary historical record of one of the most consequential periods in American economic history, when personal computing moved from novelty to infrastructure and companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft were actively reshaping the commercial landscape.
Key Highlights Inside
- "The Fall of Steve Jobs": The lead feature documents Jobs' failed attempt to remove CEO John Sculley — the executive Jobs himself had recruited from PepsiCo — and the Apple board's decision to strip Jobs of his operational role, effectively ending his authority over the company he co-founded.
- The Jobs-Sculley Relationship: The article examines the dynamic between the two men at the center of Apple's leadership crisis, providing contemporary reportage on an event that would become one of the most analyzed episodes in Silicon Valley history.
- NBC's Resurgence: A separate feature covers NBC's return to ratings and profitability, documenting the network's mid-decade revival in the context of a rapidly shifting American media landscape.
- Technology and Media Intersection: The pairing of an Apple crisis story with an NBC recovery story in a single August 1985 issue makes this a useful document for researchers studying how two major American industries — computing and broadcast television — were simultaneously navigating transformation.
- Real-Time Corporate History: Published while the dust of the Apple boardroom struggle was still settling, the issue represents contemporary journalism rather than retrospective analysis — a distinction that gives it particular value as a primary source document.
Condition & Rarity
A very good condition rating on a forty-year-old weekly business magazine is a meaningful benchmark. Fortune in 1985 was printed on coated stock designed for professional readability rather than archival longevity, and copies that have survived without significant tanning, brittleness, or moisture damage represent genuine survivorship. Minor edge wear is the expected attribute of a newsstand or office-read copy of this vintage and does not compromise the integrity of the cover imagery or interior text. The presence of a protective plastic sleeve indicates appropriate storage at some point in the magazine's history, which is the single most effective intervention for slowing paper degradation in periodicals of this era. When evaluating any surviving copy of the August 5, 1985 Fortune, collectors should prioritize the condition of the cover — where the Jobs headline and associated imagery carry the primary identification value — as well as the completeness of the interior feature pages, which are the core research and collector interest of this issue.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Issues documenting Steve Jobs at genuine turning points in his career — rather than in the retrospective glow of Apple's later success — are among the more purposefully sought items in technology history collecting, and the August 1985 Fortune is near the top of that list. If this issue is currently unavailable, the Steve Jobs magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com brings together original issues from across his career in one place. The broader Fortune magazine collection is also worth exploring for other landmark issues documenting American technology and business history from the same transformative decade.