Jim Gable Visits Catholic to Share His Experience Working at Apple

By Catherine O’Grady

Jim Gable, former Vice President of software production at Apple, was invited by the Busch School of Business’s Management 310 class to discuss his time at Apple and share his experience working with Steve Jobs on Monday morning. 

“I joined because of the Macbook,” said Gabel. Gabel was an employee of Apple for 12 years during the 1980s and 1990s in a plethora of roles including intern, product manager, marketing manager and vice president. Gable was an employee of Apple during Jobs’ firing in 1985 and his return to save the company in 1997. 

Gable began his career after graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in industrial engineering. Gable was attracted to Apple because of its innovation in the field of electronics.

During Jobs’ decade-long hiatus, Apple rotated multiple CEOs that led to the company’s demise. Critics, as well as Business Insider, projected the company to go bankrupt. In 1997, upon Jobs’ return, he accomplished the unthinkable.

“Guy makes the most innovative and talked about company in America, gets kicked out, gets kicked out for ten years is brought back, the company is dying, everybody assumes its going out of business,” said Gabel. “And not only does he save it from going out of business but it grows into the world’s largest company.”

Gable applauded Jobs for the decisions he made to save the company. Jobs scaled back the products Apple distributed to four Macs and focused on the production of the limited number of products.

“Steve’s obsession with image and the mission was all encompassing,” Gabel said. But ultimately, it was this drive that saved the company and led to its success.

“I think one of the things that did happen when Steve came back: a lot of the old values of the place reemerged,” said Gable. 

Although Jobs may have saved the company, Gable criticized the means by which Jobs achieved this success. 

“He had no emotional ties to the people working there,” Gable said. Jobs had no problem criticizing people for their mistakes. He saw everyone as expendable because he knew he could do most people’s jobs better than they could, except for the software engineers because Jobs couldn’t code software. 

Although he was known for his arrogance, Jobs still saved the company and built it into what it is today. 

“The guy was unbelievably different,” said Gable. “The guy was actually amazing in a lot of different ways.”

“I admired how humble Mr. Gable was about all of his success,” said Patrick Dwyer, senior strategy, management, and operations major and student in Management 310. “I hope I can be there if he returns to speak again at Catholic.”