Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 228 posts

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#41

Post by jmclnx »

cmiles8 wrote: post #6

In many ways modern Apple is largely Next. The Apple that was dying when he returned largely faded away. Folks forget that Apple was literally days away from simply going bust. One of the most amazing comeback stories in the history of business.

True but people also forget Microsoft invested a lot of $ into Apple to keep it going. M/S did that so they could point to Apple as a competitor during their anti-trust trials.

That investment gave Jobs time to turn Apple around, otherwise it would be gone.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#43

Post by dmazin »

jorisw wrote: post #16
dmazin wrote: post #5

If you want more on this, I recommend Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing by Stross. I’m not sure, but it might be the only extensive book about Next other than this new one. Though it’s essentially a long hit piece. The author really had it out for Jobs. In fact it’s a completely uncharitable book now that I think about it. Hopefully this new book will be a lot less biased.

Another book that focuses on this period is Becoming Steve Jobs

Yeah, that's definitely my favorite book about Apple/Steve Jobs.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#44

Post by gangstead »

shnock wrote: post #39
Projectiboga wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not it they simply went Chapter 11 and reorganized.

Is that how filing for bankruptcy works?

That's how chapter 11 type bankruptcy works. The business continues to run but the debtors are now the owners. There's also chapter 7 where the business shuts down and stripped for parts to pay the debts.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#45

Post by dosisking »

cmiles8 wrote: post #6

In many ways modern Apple is largely Next. The Apple that was dying when he returned largely faded away. Folks forget that Apple was literally days away from simply going bust. One of the most amazing comeback stories in the history of business.

Apple was NeXT but not anymore. All the NeXT people were pushed out. Turns out, most of the work was being done by the NeXT people. Probably when Scott Forstall gets stabbed in the back by Tim Cook, that was the end of the NeXT era of Apple.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#47

Post by dosisking »

WillAdams wrote: post #13

Presumably, the book goes into depth about the folks who actually did the work: - Susan Kare and Keith Ohlfs who did the UI design - Caroline Rose (Author of _Inside Macintosh_) who wrote the documentation - Avie Tevanian (the most heavily recruited CS student at that time w/ job offers from Apple, AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft) who wrote the Mach Micro kernel - Brad J. Cox (author of https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho…

- Steve Naroff who basically hacked together Objective-C++ in a few weekends. His interview with the Computer History Museum is worth a watch.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#48

Post by JKCalhoun »

hedgehog0 wrote: post #27
jorisw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another book that focuses on this period is Becoming Steve Jobs

I love “Becoming Steve Jobs” much more than the official biography.

I bailed on the official bio when I got to the part where Jobs is (belatedly) crediting his adoptive father with showing young Steve the importance of (paraphrasing) "giving as much attention to the parts of the product that the customer will never see".

It was clear at that point that this would be a Jobs-directed bio and I saw no point in continuing to read that.

Re: Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on his years at NeXT Computer

#50

Post by Foobar8568 »

jazz9k wrote: post #17
yardie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be overly dramatic about that period. Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away from filing bankruptcy. They were still a multi-billion dollar company even then. They just had very bad supply chain management. A bunch of old Macs sitting in warehouses not selling and too many people on payroll without any clear objectives. As Steve put it, "the ship was sinking and Gil (D'Amelio) was wo…

It's funny how many people Jobs had to fire during this period, but is still seen as a good guy to many in the tech community. Not that different from when Musk took over Twitter.

Another difference worth pointing, Jobs wasn't seen as a pedo or nazi. And we haven't seen him begging already convicted Epstein to go to his island to enjoy the wildest parties. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/28/elon-mu...
Post reply on HN