How Apple’s former head of product shares decades of business wisdom on Medium | by Harris Sokel | September 2023

Harris Sokel: Your publication Monday Note has been developing for more than 16 years – congratulations on continuing! You have such a knack for getting to the heart of tech news. What was the impetus for publication?

Jean-Louis Gasse: I started Monday Note in Guardianin fact over ten years ago! My co-founder, Frédéric Filou, has had a long career in European journalism, and he and I wanted to start our own series of reflections on business and technology. Guardian was kind enough to receive us at first; we built a loyal readership there, but eventually one of their top editors left and they lost interest. We needed a new platform.

Medium deserves enormous credit for creating an open platform untainted by anger and misinformation.

Frederick suggested Medium, so we gave it a try. It turned out to be one of the easiest publishing tools we’ve ever used. As a writer, I have to turn very few dials to get things done. Medium provides the perfect set of tools for quick and easy essay writing, polishing, and publishing. We have been using the platform continuously since 2016. (Frederick moved on to other opportunities a few years ago, so I’m running Monday note me now.)

Tools aside, Medium deserves huge credit for creating an open platform untainted by anger and misinformation. I consider myself blessed and grateful for such an environment. Staying free of hate and anger is great in this industry!

GS: Has anything changed in your approach to writing since moving from Guardian to average?

JLG: I was much more aware of my political surroundings Guardian. This is a liberal publication, so I should have known that. I wouldn’t exactly call it self-censorship, but I had to pay attention to what I said.

I feel freer on Medium. I also have more control over how my essays look. I like to keep things simple. Medium gives me a good balance between flexibility and simplicity.

HS: I’d love to hear more about your experience as an Apple executive. How did you end up there? What did you learn?

JLG: Of course! It was the early 1980s and I was working as the CEO of the French branch of Exxon. I met a Wall Street analyst friend for lunch; he told me that Apple was opening a subsidiary in France and needed someone to lead it. At the time, I had been with Exxon for seven years and was looking for a new opportunity. Apple seemed like the perfect fit—I signed my employment contract on the day of Apple’s IPO: December 12, 1980.

Back then, everything worked almost magically at Apple. We were rebels against the computing establishment. IBM was an evil giant and French consumers responded fantastically to our renegade brand. By the time I left my position as head of Apple France in 1985, we were Apple’s largest business outside of the US. This is how I built my reputation.

Eventually, I became more open on the executive team. I criticized the way we marketed the Mac in the US. I thought (and still do) that Apple’s attempts to win over corporate American customers were foolish. We had the LaserWriter, we had the Adobe software, we had the beautiful Mac user interface. A lot of people will love it! We didn’t have to sell to corporations. I felt it would dilute our brand. I was totally against it.

Shortly after I talked about our marketing strategy, I was asked to set up a software division in the US because (and this is an old story at Apple) the Mac didn’t have enough native software.

A few years later, in 1985, Steve Jobs tried to oust then-CEO John Scully. I sided with Scully, who put me in charge of product development in Cupertino. The Mac didn’t do very well (it wasn’t as compatible or customizable as its competitors, which was a major drawback in the early days). Ultimately, from a business perspective, we managed to pull the Mac out of the ditch. Finally, I parted ways with Apple in 1990. Scully and I disagreed about the future of the company and decided it was best for me to leave.

It was an emotional but ultimately amicable parting. I have no beef. I still count John Scully as my benefactor. He gave me a great opportunity to lead the product side of Apple, so I’m very grateful to him. For five years he tolerated my occasional sharp disagreements.

HS: Why did you side with John Scully over Steve Jobs?

JLG: Honestly, for all the appreciation I (and we all) have for Steve’s contribution to the world, he really didn’t know much at the time. He knew Apple. That’s what he knew. He knew little about the wider world.

But Steve’s passion for Apple was incredible. I remember conversations in Paris—Steve was often at Apple France—where we talked about the world, life, and his experience of being fired from Apple in 1985. He fell off his horse, dusted himself off, and created Pixar. If all you do in your life is create Pixar, you’re a titan of the industry! But Steve didn’t stop at Pixar. He tried to make computers again and unfortunately named his company “NeXT”, which was a pretty obvious disdain for Apple. NeXT was a technical success but a commercial failure. They had an operating system, but no machine to run it on. He had no “horse”, so to speak.

He found that horse when he returned to Apple and brought NeXT with him. He also brought in Scott Forstall, among others, and they managed to rejuvenate the creaky Mac OS, turning it into the modern base Unix at its core and the operating system we use today.

I think Steve was burned and burned by his experience at Apple. Letting go made him and all of us successful.

HS: Back to your experience on Medium — who are your readers? What do you have to do with them? What noteworthy responses did you receive?

JLG: My readers are different people! They are just as fascinated by the future of technology (and Apple) as I am. Many of them are critical, which makes sense because I sometimes post controversial opinions like this about Intel culture. I welcome critical readers—really, I’m not being diplomatic. i am writing Monday Note to understand what I think. It’s one thing to have brilliant ideas in your heart, but it’s another thing to put them on (digital) paper.

I’m 79 and changing, and over time I’ve learned not to engage in heated exchanges online. I always let the heat die down before I respond (whether I think my critics are right or not). As a result, I developed a kind of understanding with my readers.

I must single out one reader (they shall remain nameless, but they know who they are!). This reader has a keen eye for typos as well as translation quirks when I write in English as a non-native speaker. I am indebted to them. I love the English language; I mistreat him sometimes, but I love it. I mention this reader and his corrections in the printed version of my book, Grateful freak.

HS: Is there a particular Medium story of yours that you’re proud of, or one that had a bigger impact than you expected? One thing that comes to mind (and still comes back to) is your essay Jeff Bezos’ approach to writing. Over 150,000 people have read, shared, and responded to this essay. Why do you think it resonated so widely?

JLG: I have a lot of respect for Bezos. I’ve known some of his close associates in my career—one of them shared a few insider anecdotes about how he runs Amazon. I read his annual letter to shareholders, and now I have friends deep within the organization who confirm that every Bezos meeting begins with a silent reading of a six-page essay. It also bans PowerPoint; in his opinion, PowerPoint sterilizes thinking. Based on the responses to this essay, readers seemed to agree.

I’ve also had a great response to a series of essays I’ve published on human resources. When I landed in Cupertino in 1985, I discovered that the engineers (whom I led) referred to the HR department as the “Gestapo,” the “KGB,” and the “thought police.” Based on my experience working in HR at Apple, I wrote a trilogy of essays on hiring, firing, and performance appraisal—and it sparked a lot of conversation in my network outside of Medium.

GS: Tell me about your new book. Why did you decide to self-publish instead of looking for a publisher?

JLG: A few years ago, I became friends with investor Stephen Sinofsky, who self-published a masterful memoir, Hard core software, about what he learned as a technical assistant to Bill Gates at Microsoft in the early days. He eventually became president of Windows and was later fired by the ever helpful Steve Ballmer.

Sinofsky showed me the manuscript before publishing it and explained his decision to self-publish. In addition to the freedom you get with self-publishing, you can avoid the reductive framing that many publishers (especially publishing marketing departments) will use to market a book.

Grateful freak basically, it’s a memoir of my life and career: how I came to work at Apple and what I learned there. If I were selling it to a major publisher, I imagine they’d want me to say something about how Apple lost its soul when Steve Jobs left. They would want dirt on me leaving, being let go by Scully, and the drama of switching to Scully over Steve Jobs just before Jobs was fired. But I don’t believe that Apple has lost its soul. And I don’t really have much dirt! I’m pretty positive about Apple, Jobs, and Scully. I have no dirt or gossip to share about anyone.

So I published it myself. I shared it with people at Apple and got a very positive response.

GS: Imagine giving advice to someone who wants to start writing on Medium — or just the internet in general. What would you advise them?

JLG: I would have to resort to the rather trite “Just do it so you can get feedback.” Don’t spend too much time thinking, as this can lead to paralysis. Find a good editor, someone who will read your drafts. I have a great editor, Doug Fulton, who was the editor of the Be newsletter. (Be, Inc. was my next company after Apple.) We had a weekly newsletter in both Be and Apple France. So I wrote more or less weekly forever.

What I love about Medium is that the hardest part is the writing.

Roll with punches. What I love about Medium is that the hardest part of Medium is the writing. The rest is easy. I can focus on the hard part, which is figuring out what I’m thinking, what I’m thinking, and putting it into words. Finally: don’t ask yourself, let your readers ask you.