May 15, 2026
Steve’s flop era was NeXT level
Steve Jobs Next Computer: His Forgotten Exile Years
Before the comeback king, Jobs had a messy flop era fans say changed everything
TLDR: A new book says Steve Jobs’s years away from Apple weren’t a footnote but the rough chapter that taught him how to lead. Commenters are split between calling NeXT unfairly ignored and insisting it was so important that today’s Apple is basically built on it.
Steve Jobs may be remembered as Mr. Apple, but the comment section is obsessed with his so-called lost years running NeXT, the company he led after getting pushed out. The new book argues those 12 years weren’t a tiny side quest at all — they were the messy, expensive, ego-bruising training montage that made his later Apple comeback possible. And readers are eating that up. One popular take: failure, limits, and public embarrassment may have been the best management course Jobs ever took. In other words, the billionaire legend apparently needed a flop era.
But not everyone is buying the “forgotten company” angle. Several commenters basically yelled, forgotten by whom? They say NeXT wasn’t some dusty footnote — it shaped the software behind today’s Apple devices and mattered hugely in the design world of the 1990s. Others went even bigger, arguing that modern Apple is basically NeXT wearing an Apple costume, and that Apple itself was frighteningly close to collapse before Jobs returned.
Then came the side drama: one reader recommended an older book on NeXT, only to slam it as a full-on anti-Jobs takedown, while hoping this new release is less of a grudge match. And because no Apple discussion is complete without a totally unrelated product grievance, one commenter hijacked the thread to roast the Magic Mouse for causing actual hand pain — a perfect reminder that in Apple fandom, even a history lesson can turn into a design complaint spiral. Classic internet.
Key Points
- •The article focuses on Geoffrey Cain’s forthcoming book *Steve Jobs in Exile*, about Steve Jobs’s years at NeXT Computer from 1985 to 1997.
- •Cain argues that Jobs’s NeXT period is often omitted from the standard narrative, despite representing about 12 years of his career and contributing key software and hardware advances.
- •The article says NeXT technology became the foundation for Apple operating systems developed after Jobs returned to Apple.
- •Cain states that both Apple’s early phase and NeXT struggled commercially, and that Jobs made damaging decisions during that earlier period.
- •The article frames this historical reassessment in the context of Apple’s current CEO transition from Tim Cook to John Ternus, according to the piece.