GoKawiilWhenever 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.
It’s a story worth remembering, with Apple, now 50 years old, in the midst of another CEO transition. John Ternus, previously the senior vice president of hardware, is set to take over the reins from Tim Cook this September. Looking back at Jobs’s NeXT years reveals what he had to learn for Apple to succeed.
Cain spoke with IEEE Spectrum about his book, Jobs’s legacy, and Apple today. Steve Jobs in Exile comes out May 19.
Why did you choose to focus on this period of Jobs’s life?
The story we always hear about Steve Jobs is that he founded Apple version 1.0, and he was brilliant there. And then he was fired, and he went into the wilderness for a short while. He returned and created Apple version 2.0, which was the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, turning Apple into the $4 trillion company that it is today. That’s the popular narrative we hear.
But that’s not an accurate story. That’s the legend, but it’s not what actually happened.
I was a tech writer for a long time, and I had been diving into the history of these major tech figures. In my reporting, I went around the world, and everywhere I went, people were talking about Steve Jobs. It was sort of like, “let’s study the life of Steve Jobs and try to extract school lessons from it.” That’s what a lot of young entrepreneurs and engineers were telling me.
I quickly realized from interviewing former colleagues of Steve Jobs that only half the story was being told, and it glossed over these entire middle 12 years in the legacy of Steve Jobs. He died when he was [56] years old. That’s a third of his adult life, and he spent it at this company called NeXT Computer.
[NeXT] was the source of major advancements in software, especially, but also in hardware, and it had been completely forgotten by history. Not only was this a significant company historically, but today it’s the foundation for all theoperating systems that Apple has developed since then. When you look at an Apple device today, in a way you’re looking at NeXT Computer.
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