After he left Apple (here's my first post), Jobs went on to NeXT, which he envisioned as a high-end computer for the educational market. This video shows him at work, and shows all those young folks he had
I love the start of this with Jobs picking carrots. He was a diet nut, vegan as often as not, and there's stories in Isaacson's book of Jobs thinking that his wonderful diet was a substitute for soap. Going by the smell emanating from his unwashed body, apparently it wasn't. You also get to see that he's already discovered the black turtleneck.
NeXT was ultimately a disaster. It was a striking black cube, horribly overpriced (if you wanted a printer and a disk drive, figure on spending about ten grand), proprietary, and more evolutionary than revolutionary. The logo was the best thing about it, in hindsight.
At that same time, Jobs bought a controlling interest in a company that George Lucas wanted to get rid of to help pay for his difficult divorce. That company had created a computer that rendered incredible images, which is why Jobs wanted in; the company was Pixar, named after that artistic rendering computer. Jobs intended to use its resources to sell Pixar-like computers and software. Animation was merely a demonstration medium for the company at the time. The lamp was still to come.
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