which accounted for something like 80% of the PC market — the remaining 20% being Apple. But the Redmond-based company was also an application developer, and it had actually worked on the Macintosh with Steve Jobs in the early 1980s to provide Mac software such as Multiplan.

## Taking over?

The first talks of Steve Jobs going back to Apple started in 1995, even before Gil Amelio was named CEO. In December of that year, Steve’s friend Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle and one of the world’s richest men, talked about making a hostile takeover bid for Apple in the media and on his website. All the arrangements were made for Oracle and other investors to purchase the company for about $3 billion and install Steve as its new boss. Steve later explained that he was the one who decided against it at the last minute:

60