Steve Jobs in Exile: A Deep Dive Into His NeXT Years
▼ Summary
– The author was a Mac enthusiast in the late 1990s who read tech magazines, used IRC, and downloaded pirated software.
– Frustrated by adults’ lack of understanding about rapid tech changes, the author turned to books like *Fire in the Valley* and *Where Wizards Stay Up Late*.
– Geoffrey Cain’s *Steve Jobs in Exile* fits the author’s personal list of favorite late 20th-century tech journalism.
– The book details Jobs’ “exile” era at NeXT, arguing it was crucial for his personal growth and produced lasting technology.
– Innovations from NeXT, especially the NeXTSTEP OS, continue to underpin modern macOS and iOS.
By the late 1990s, I had already become a die-hard Mac enthusiast, devouring every issue of Macworld, logging late nights on IRC, and downloading pirated software I honestly didn’t need. My formative years straddled the tail end of the dial-up and BBS era, just as the World Wide Web began to take shape.
I was desperate to understand where this digital revolution had come from and why it had accelerated so rapidly. The adults around me seemed either confused or completely uninterested.
So I turned to books. I absorbed Fire in the Valley (1984), Where Wizards Stay Up Late (1996), Infinite Loop (1999), and Dealers of Lightning (1999). In my imagination, and to some extent on my actual bookshelf, I had curated a personal canon of late 20th-century tech journalism.
Geoffrey Cain’s latest work, Steve Jobs in Exile, though published in the 21st century, would fit seamlessly onto that old list.
I was already familiar with the broad strokes of this narrative: the birth of Silicon Valley, the creation of the ARPANet, the innovations at Xerox PARC, Apple’s founding, its near-disintegration, and Jobs’ departure to launch NeXT.
Cain reminds us with remarkable precision that Jobs’ “exile” period at NeXT was not just pivotal for his personal and professional growth. It also mattered profoundly for the rest of the world. The technological breakthroughs born at NeXT, especially the NeXTSTEP operating system, live on today in what we now call macOS and iOS.
As Cain writes, “NeXTSTEP was Steve’s attempt to make Unix taste sweet.”
(Source: Ars Technica)