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Q: And did you take on the role then as CEO?

Jobs: Well, no, I did not. I was very concerned that Pixar was a newly public company with shareholders, employees, and I felt that - - to my knowledge there had never been a CEO of two public companies before. So I felt if I took the job, the Pixar shareholders and employees would think I was abandoning them.

Q: Mm-hmm

Jobs: And I decided I just - - that I couldn’t do that. So I took the title of interim CEO and agreed to come back for 90 days to help recruit a full-time CEO.

Q: How did that recruitment effort go?

Jobs: I failed.

Q: And when you say you failed, is it that you didn’t find anyone that you thought would be suitable to take on the role?

Jobs: Yes. Apple was not in good shape and everybody knew it and the kind of candidates that we were being offered up by the headhunters were not very talented.

Q: Okay. In other words, not the sort of people who could turn Apple around?

Jobs: Yes.

Q: Okay. So after that 90 days, what happened next?

Jobs: Well, it just kind of slid into the fact that I stayed. I kept the interim CEO title for quite some time, a number of years.

Seriously?

We’re supposed to believe that?