Steve Jobs’s Wilderness Years Shaped His Success as Apple CEO | IEEE Spectrum

[marvin]

Steve Jobs's Wilderness Years Shaped His Success as Apple CEO
A new book recalls forgotten lessons from his time at NeXT Computer

https://spectrum.ieee.org/steve-jobs-next-computer

Whenever you read about Steve Jobs, odds are the words "Apple CEO" follow closely behind. The mythic cofounder of 
one of today's biggest tech companies is strongly associated with the role, but his tenure as CEO was shorter than many of us realize.
 
In fact, when Jobs was exiled from Apple in the 1980s and '90s, he spent almost as much time leading another computer company that has largely been forgotten: NeXT Computer. In his forthcoming book Steve Jobs in Exile, journalist and author Geoffrey Cain tells the story of Jobs's years at NeXT Computer from 1985 to 1997.

[Rhetorica]

It really is an annoying bit of the victors writing the history books, isn't it? Little do most Apple lifestylers know, the company they knew died in 1997 and was replaced by NeXT management and engineering, wearing Apple's skin...

[Adam_Hall]

IMHO NeXT employees saved Apple.

[Adam_Hall]

The problem was that NeXT software and hardware was slow and the software was few and far between. A good idea on paper but the hardware was just not ready to run it. The real success came with releasing the iphone. I would argue this had nothing to do with NeXT and perhaps had everything to do with Steve Jobs. I love NeXT software, but I often think I like the promise of it, but I can't help but notice it was implemented on hardware that was not really fast enough to run it IMHO.

[jeffburg]

It really is an annoying bit of the victors writing the history books, isn't it? Little do most Apple lifestylers know, the company they knew died in 1997 and was replaced by NeXT management and engineering, wearing Apple's skin...

This is actually so true and why I think it's hard to find a retro tech community for my interests. I like hanging out on Tinker Different, but honestly, the only parts of that forum that have activity are for Macs that run the classic OS and I'm sorry, I just have 0 interest in that. I used those Macs in high school, and they were terrible. I post a bit about my explorations with my G4 iMac proudly running Mac OS X and the other forum members have little interest in OS X Macs. In fact they value the 2000's era Macs that can still run Mac OS 9... no idea why lol. I suppose I just need more time to pass. I think right now the 2000's Macs have not yet become old enough for people to clamor over them... but it will come. Haha.

And same goes for reverse here, I hope this doesn't offend any members here, but in my opinion if you are a NeXT fan, you have to use a Mac. I am still running NeXTSTEP, it's just much newer and shinier, but the guts are still the same. This was totally my experience when making MathEdit. The amount of changes I needed to make to the app to get it to work on both OPENSTEP 4.2 and on macOS Tahoe were not as large as you think. Not to mention it also runs in GNUStep. So yeah. I love my shiny aluminum ARM64 NeXTSTATION 

[Rhetorica]

[...] the other forum members have little interest in OS X Macs. In fact they value the 2000's era Macs that can still run Mac OS 9... no idea why lol.

I have had not one but two conversations on Reddit that boil down to someone asking, "What's the appropriate OS version for this early New World Mac that I just got?" — only for the correct response (Rhapsody) to get booed by absolute plebeians who expect 8.6 or 9.0 to be the answer!

And same goes for reverse here, I hope this doesn't offend any members here, but in my opinion if you are a NeXT fan, you have to use a Mac. I am still running NeXTSTEP, it's just much newer and shinier, but the guts are still the same. This was totally my experience when making MathEdit. The amount of changes I needed to make to the app to get it to work on both OPENSTEP 4.2 and on macOS Tahoe were not as large as you think. Not to mention it also runs in GNUStep. So yeah. I love my shiny aluminum ARM64 NeXTSTATION 

I think the standard rebuttal to this is something like, "Maybe if Tim Cook drops dead and the walled garden nonsense stops." Let us remember Mavericks Forever!