Jobs had co-founded Apple seven years earlier with his hacker friend Steve Wozniak. A pair of teenagers, the two Steves had little idea how to grow the hot company at the dawn of the soon-to-be-giant PC industry.

Jobs helped recruit Sculley from Pepsi-Cola, where Sculley had shown a genius for lifestyle advertising. The pair ran Apple as co-CEOs but fell out and took their differences to the board. Though a visionary, the board decided Jobs was too volatile for the lead role. So he quit.

On the same day he resigned, Jobs submitted incorporation papers to the California secretary of state for the name of his new company, NeXT Computer.

NeXT was Jobs’ revenge. Jobs founded NeXT with the express purpose of running Apple into the ground. NeXT would develop computers that were far better than anything Apple could offer, and Apple would soon be out of business.

NeXT never did put Apple out of business, and for the next 10 years just barely survived itself. It did, however, produce a fantastic operating system, NeXTStep, which many praised as ahead of its time.

In December 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $400 million. It wanted NeXTStep to form the basis of a new, modern operating system, one that didn’t crash every time Netscape Navigator was launched.

Jobs came on board as an informal adviser to then-CEO Gil Amelio. But within months, the board fired Amelio after Apple suffered one of the biggest quarterly losses in Silicon Valley history.

Jobs was initially reluctant to take a role at Apple. His other company, Pixar, had just released its first movie, Toy Story, to great acclaim. But he soon found himself putting in more time at Apple, working hard to whip it into shape.

On Sept. 16, 1997, Apple announced that Jobs had officially been named interim CEO, or — as the company cleverly put it — iCEO.

Source: Wikipedia, others

Photo: Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.
Eric Risberg/AP

This article first appeared on Wired.com Sept. 16, 2008.

See Also:

• Jan. 17, 1985: Please Hold
• March 11, 1985: ConnNet Lets the Public Jack In, X.25 Style
• March 15, 1985: Dot-Com Revolution Starts With a Whimper
• May 23, 1985: Selling Stealth Secrets to the Reds Comes at a High Price
• June 11, 1985: Karen Quinlan Dies, But the Issue Lives On
• Sept. 2, 1985: Hey, Everyone, We Found the Titanic
• January 1997: CES Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas
• Jan. 12, 1997: HAL of a Computer
• Jan. 22, 1997: Heads Up, Lottie! It's Space Junk!
• Feb. 22, 1997: Hello, Dolly
• May 11, 1997: Machine Bests Man in Tournament-Level Chess Match
• June 12, 1997: Trying to Stay One Jump Ahead of the Counterfeiters
• June 25, 1997: Minor Collision Doesn't Dull Cargo Ship's Luster
• July 10, 1997: Neanderthal DNA Suggests a Separate, Unequal Being
• Aug. 6, 1997: Apple Rescued — by Microsoft
• Dec. 11, 1997: World Signs Onto Kyoto Protocol
• Dec. 18, 1997: Tokyo Bay Tunnel Opens
• Sept. 16, 1736: One Degree of Separation — Fahrenheit Dies

Authors: Leander Kahney

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