NeXT

"Steve was thrilled about selling NeXT to Apple. NeXT had launched its first computer in 1988 but had failed to compete in the burgeoning market for workstation computers. In 1993 it had shut down its hardware business to focus on selling its operating system and development software. In selling the company to Apple, Steve had found a face-saving parking place for NeXT, and a chance to keep its advanced software technologies alive. It was no wonder he was excited about it. “NeXT’s software will be the core of a new-generation operating system for Apple,” he told me after the sale. “They really need it.” As Steve’s responsibilities at NeXT began to wind down, I wondered if his day-to-day involvement at Pixar might increase from the weekly visits that were now his custom. But nothing changed. Pixar was steadily working on A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2 and putting the expansion plan into place. Steve seemed happy with the way things were working at Pixar and he showed no inclination to change"

"By late 1996, NeXT had all but abandoned its goal of building an OS. Steve Jobs had told his staff “the ships are burning,” a metaphor signaling there was no turning back, in announcing WebObjects as the company’s new direction. But then a young staffer learned something intriguing: Apple needed a new operating system."

"As the details were being worked out, a group of NeXT employees sat in a room together, chatting. They’d all worked with Steve, and they just didn’t understand what Amelio was thinking. None believed Jobs would ever be a number two. Not anywhere, probably, but certainly not at the company he cofounded as a twenty-one-year-old."

"The duo had proved themselves making the cube-shaped computer at NeXT, when Steve wanted “no draft angles, no parting lines,” meaning that the sides of the cast part would be perfectly parallel to the direction the part was ejected from in the mold. “Tim and Ken figured it out,” this person says. “And it was absurdly expensive, but that was a defining experience. So if Jobs was having a hard problem and these guys say, ‘It cannot be done,’ then it really can’t. But if these guys say, ‘It can,’ then it’s just really hard. Acorn was almost his brain trust or sounding board for, is this *possible* or is this *crazy?*”"

"Neither NeXT nor Pixar proved to be good vehicles for Jobs. When he returned to Apple, he found a right mess; a whole series of projects and products, including the Newton handwriting recognition software, were loss-makers and cash-consumers. Apple had one product that was profitable and credible, the Macintosh. Jobs cut everything else, and then paused until his people created ‘the next big thing’, which proved to be the iPod and iTunes, and then all the delightful and simple new products they created. Apple had the DNA, and design capability, which Jobs greatly augmented, to go from strength to strength. Jobs took his rackety old vehicle, which was barely roadworthy in 1997, and endowed it with such a powerful new engine that it became for a time the most valuable vehicle in the world. The lesson? Don’t look for a new vehicle if the existing one has potential for success and can be radically reconditioned."

"NeXT expected to sell its factory capacity of ten thousand computers a month. Only four hundred a month were sold. NeXT was a magnificent flop – Jobs at his most expansive, and least commercial. Yet the venture served a function for Jobs – it distracted him from being fired from Apple, it kept him in the digital game, it preserved his self-respect as a player in the brave new world, it gave him valuable lessons in how not to create a viable business, and most of all it eventually paved the way for his return to Apple, when it was in even worse straits than NeXT."

"During this interregnum, Steve Jobs asked me to fly up to San Jose so I could see a movie he was in the middle of making for this unknown company he’d acquired called Pixar. But first he wanted to show me what he was doing with a “revolutionary” computer system at another new company of his called NeXT. It hadn’t been going that well because its complex yet elegant design couldn’t find a market, given the absolute domination of Microsoft. I went to the NeXT office, where Steve showed me a few scenes from *Toy Story*, and asked if I would join the Pixar board. I said I’d have to think about it. I didn’t want to commit myself and didn’t want to insult him, but I’d never been much interested in animation and had never made any animated movies. I don’t really understand the form and I thought this new Pixar work was awkward, and, separating me from most of the world, I didn’t get any of the charm of *Toy Story.*"

"The relationship between Master Hiruma and Jobs goes beyond that of merely teacher and student, or even friends. After Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985, in disappointment, he appointed Master Hiruma as a “spiritual advisor” at the next company he founded, NeXT. When he married Laurene Powell in 1991, it was this Zen master who officiated at the wedding ceremony held in Yosemite. It is understandable that Zen and Japanese culture deeply influenced Jobs’ abilities and aesthetics, who was often called a genius."