Correction Appended
On a soft november day in northern california, steve jobs is guiding his gray Porsche convertible out of San Francisco, and he is talking about Apple Computer Inc. That, of course, is what Jobs is famous for: as a co-founder of Apple in 1976, he was a leader of the computer revolution, until he was ousted in 1985 in a board-room coup. Jobs was 30, and he walked away with $150 million but no small measure of hurt.
As he negotiates the Friday afternoon traffic on Route 101, Jobs keeps insisting that he does not want to talk about Apple. Then he goes on at length about how the company needs to reinvent itself, how it needs to regain its lost mantle as the personal computer industry's leading innovator. He is intimate but elusive, and undeniably articulate. He recalls his years at Apple fondly, then makes it clear that he is doing nothing more than reminiscing. After all, he has other things to worry about, like running Pixar, the digital-animation studio that created ''Toy Story,'' and overseeing Next, the computer-software company he started when he left Apple.
On a soft november day in northern california, steve jobs is guiding his gray Porsche convertible out of San Francisco, and he is talking about Apple Computer Inc. That, of course, is what Jobs is famous for: as a co-founder of Apple in 1976, he was a leader of the computer revolution, until he was ousted in 1985 in a board-room coup. Jobs was 30, and he walked away with $150 million but no small measure of hurt.
As he negotiates the Friday afternoon traffic on Route 101, Jobs keeps insisting that he does not want to talk about Apple. Then he goes on at length about how the company needs to reinvent itself, how it needs to regain its lost mantle as the personal computer industry's leading innovator. He is intimate but elusive, and undeniably articulate. He recalls his years at Apple fondly, then makes it clear that he is doing nothing more than reminiscing. After all, he has other things to worry about, like running Pixar, the digital-animation studio that created ''Toy Story,'' and overseeing Next, the computer-software company he started when he left Apple.
Still,
Apple clearly exerts a lingering pull on Jobs. ''It was like the first
adult love of your life,'' he confesses, ''something that is always
special to you, no matter how it turns out.'' In less than three weeks,
Jobs would be offered the chance to return to his first love. And he
jumped, setting off a frenzy of late-night meetings, negotiations and
soul-searching throughout Silicon Valley. On Dec. 20, Apple's C.E.O. and
chairman, Gilbert F. Amelio, announced that the company would buy Next
Software Inc. for $400 million. For that price, Apple also gets Steven
P. Jobs, or at least a piece of him, in a role to be determined. So Jobs
becomes the computer era's prodigal son: his return to Apple after more
than a decade in exile is an extraordinary act of corporate
reconciliation, a move laden with triumph, vindication and opportunity.
And it is a particularly dramatic finale to an already dramatic second
act in Jobs's life, both personally and professionally.
at 41, jobs looks pretty much as he did at 30, or even 25. he still wears jeans every day, usually with a black turtleneck and running shoes. But Jobs says that he is a different person than he was when he left Apple in 1985, and that Apple is a different company. He insists that he is coming back to lend a hand as a part-time adviser, not to try to be the struggling com-
pany's savior. What Jobs brings to Apple, he says, is ''a lot of experience and scar tissue.''
The deepest old wound is surely the way he left the company he founded. In 1984, the team he led created the Apple Macintosh, a sleek machine whose unique operating program made the personal computer user-friendly. But the Macintosh took time to attract buyers, and Jobs was forced out before the sales materialized. Apple would make a good living off the Macintosh technology for years, but as an innovator, the company all but stood still. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Corporation began its inexorable march toward domination, modeling its Windows operating software on the Mac's point-and-click system.
at 41, jobs looks pretty much as he did at 30, or even 25. he still wears jeans every day, usually with a black turtleneck and running shoes. But Jobs says that he is a different person than he was when he left Apple in 1985, and that Apple is a different company. He insists that he is coming back to lend a hand as a part-time adviser, not to try to be the struggling com-
pany's savior. What Jobs brings to Apple, he says, is ''a lot of experience and scar tissue.''
The deepest old wound is surely the way he left the company he founded. In 1984, the team he led created the Apple Macintosh, a sleek machine whose unique operating program made the personal computer user-friendly. But the Macintosh took time to attract buyers, and Jobs was forced out before the sales materialized. Apple would make a good living off the Macintosh technology for years, but as an innovator, the company all but stood still. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Corporation began its inexorable march toward domination, modeling its Windows operating software on the Mac's point-and-click system.
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