In Memo, Jobs Says He Refused Top Apple Post

SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Jobs, in a memo sent to employees at his animation company, said he has turned down offers to become chairman and chief executive of Apple Computer Inc., the beleaguered company he co-founded two decades ago.

The electronic missive, sent earlier this week to workers at Pixar Inc. in Richmond, was seen by some as the end of a moth-and-flame dance that Jobs and the Cupertino company have been engaged in for weeks.

“His heart is in Pixar, his role is at Pixar, and he has a huge stake in Pixar,” said Lawrence Levy, the company’s chief financial officer. “He cares about Apple and wants to help them, but not be the person in the driver’s seat.”

Jobs has repeatedly said he’s not interested in running Apple because of commitments to his family and Pixar, a company best known as creator of the Disney blockbuster movie “Toy Story.” The company recently signed a deal for five more pictures with Walt Disney Co. Jobs has a 60% stake in Pixar worth about $500 million.

Some people close to Jobs, mindful of his reputation for being both mercurial and manipulative, said the Apple saga may not be over.

“Knowing Steve’s negotiating style, all it means is he probably hasn’t gotten what he wants,” said Warren Weiss, a former executive at Next Software Inc., a company Jobs founded after leaving Apple in 1985. “With Steve, it’s never over.”

Neither Jobs nor Apple officials were available for comment Thursday. But copies of the memo were posted on several Web sites and verified by employees of Pixar.

“I got a call from Apple’s board of directors three weeks ago . . . asking me to return to Apple as their CEO. I declined,” the memo said. “They then asked me to become chairman, and I again declined. So don’t worry--the crazy rumors are just that.”

Nevertheless, Jobs appears to have grabbed the wheel at Apple in the three weeks since former Chairman and Chief Executive Gilbert Amelio quit under pressure.

Jobs recently sent a companywide e-mail to Apple employees, lowering the exercise price of workers’ stock options that had become all but worthless as the company’s stock sagged amid mounting losses.

He is a member of the committee charged with finding a new CEO within three months, and has reportedly asked a number of Silicon Valley allies--including his close friend Larry Ellison, who is chief executive of Oracle Corp.--to join Apple’s board of directors.

“He’s gotten involved in things like product design, marketing and supplier negotiations,” said Adrian Mello, editor of Macworld magazine in San Francisco. “He is essentially running the company.”

All of which indicates that Jobs has dramatically elevated the advisory role he took at Apple after the company acquired Next for $425 million last December.

Still, the thought of him officially taking the helm at Apple has an almost irresistibly romantic appeal to many in Silicon Valley.

Reports that Jobs would be named chairman drove Apple shares up 5% on Wednesday. On Thursday, Apple stock closed at $17.50, up 13 cents on Nasdaq.

Jobs was the spiritual leader of Apple and the creative force behind the company’s flagship Macintosh products and operating system. But he was ousted in a 1985 boardroom shootout with John Sculley, the chief executive Jobs had recruited from Pepsi-Cola.

Deeply wounded, Jobs sold all but one of his Apple shares and spent much of the next decade building Next and Pixar. In a magazine article last year, Jobs declared that “the desktop computer industry is dead. Apple lost.”

Inside Apple’s campus in Cupertino on Thursday, employees appeared to be growing weary of the endless speculation, which peaked several days ago when Jobs became a late substitute as keynote speaker for the Macworld Expo trade show in Boston next week.

“There’s this big drama of him being kicked out of Apple in a boardroom power struggle and coming back as the prodigal son,” said one engineer. “That’s a great story--it’s mythic. But most people feel pretty ambivalent about Steve.”

Many experts said that without Jobs as chairman, it might be easier for Apple to attract a top-notch CEO. But the job is hardly inviting.

Apple has lost more than $1.5 billion over the last year and a half. A new leader would have to confront an array of unpleasant choices, including whether more layoffs are needed and whether the company should abandon the hardware business, analysts said.

Times staff writers Leslie Helm and Karen Kaplan contributed to this report.