Chapter 79 disintegration

When Jobs first unveiled the NeXT computer in 1988, it was a hit.But when the computer finally hit the market the following year, enthusiasm faded.Jobs' talent for dazzled, awed, and flocked to by the media began to wear off, and negative headlines abounded. "NeXT was not compatible with other computers at a time when the industry was moving toward interchangeable operating systems," Associated Press reporter Bart Ziegler reported, "because, relatively speaking, the NeXT There's very little existing software in use on the Internet, so it's hard to attract consumers."

NeXT attempted to reposition itself as the frontrunner of a new product category—personal workstations, aimed at those who wanted the power of a workstation with the friendliness of a personal computer.But this type of consumer had already bought such a product from the fast-growing Sun company. NeXT's revenue in 1990 was $28 million, while Sun's revenue was $2.5 billion in the same year. IBM dropped its agreement to license software to NeXT, so Jobs was forced to do something against his nature: Although he ingrained in his belief that hardware and software should be an inseparable whole, in January 1992, he agreed to license The NeXTSTEP operating system runs on other brands of computers.

An unexpected defender of Jobs at the time was Jean-Louis Garcy, who had had a run-in with Jobs at Apple and was expelled from Apple.He wrote an article praising NeXT's products for how innovative they were. "NeXT may not be Apple," Gacy said, "but Steve is still Steve." A few days later, a visitor came to Gacy's home, and Gacy's wife ran upstairs to tell him that Steve was downstairs.Jobs thanked Gacy for the article and invited him to an event where Intel's Andy Grove would join Jobs in announcing that NeXTSTEP would be built into the IBM/Intel platform. "I was sitting next to Steve's father, Paul Jobs, who was very respected," Gacy recalls. , he was so proud and happy."

A year later, Jobs inevitably changed tack; abandoning hardware manufacturing entirely.This is a painful decision, just as he gave up hardware manufacturing at Pixar.He cares about every aspect of a product, but hardware is his passion.He is overwhelmed by great design, obsessed with production details, and will spend hours watching his robots make the perfect product for him.But now he's had to lay off more than half his workforce, sell his beloved factory to Canon (which auctioned off the stylish furniture), and keep a consolation company that licenses the operating system to those who make dead machines manufacturer.

By the mid-1990s, Jobs was finding some joy in his new family life and his astounding success in the film industry, but he was disillusioned with the personal computer industry. "Innovation has practically stopped," he told Wired magazine's Gary Wolf in late 1995. "Microsoft has taken the market, but innovated very little. Apple has lost. The desktop computer market has entered Dark Ages." During the same period, he also appeared sullen and depressed in interviews with Anthony Perkins and several editors of Red Herring magazine.Right off the bat, he showed the "Grumpy Steve" side of his personality.Shortly after Perkins and his colleagues arrived, Jobs slipped out the back door for a "walk" and didn't return for 45 minutes.When the magazine photographer started taking pictures, he yelled sarcasm, forcing her to stop."Manipulative, selfish, and unabashedly rude," Perkins later wrote, "we couldn't figure out what was behind his crazy behavior." When he finally sat down for an interview, he said, even the Internet's Development is also hard to stop Microsoft's dominance. "Windows won," he said. "Unfortunately, it beat the Mac, it beat Unix, it beat OS/2. A shitty product won."

NeXT's failure to sell an all-in-one hardware and software product called into question Jobs' entire philosophy. "We made the mistake of trying to copy Apple's model and make the whole device," he said in 1995. "I think we should realize that the world is changing and we should transform into a software company right away." Although he tried hard, But he just couldn't get excited about it.He wanted to make great end-to-end integrated products that consumers would love, but now he's stuck in the business of selling enterprise software to companies that install NeXT's software on a variety of different hardware platforms. . "My heart isn't here," he said later mournfully, "and it frustrates me that I can't sell products to individuals. I didn't come into this world to sell enterprise products, to license software to be installed in one of those crappy In hardware. I never liked that."

----------------------------------------- Notes: ① "The Second Coming" (The Second Coming) is a poem by Yeats, a famous Irish poet. "What a beast, finally waiting for its hour" is one of the lines.