One surprising defender of Jobs was Jean-Louis Gassée, who had bumped elbows with Jobs when he replaced him at Apple and subsequently been ousted himself. He wrote an article extolling the creativity of NeXT products. “NeXT might not be Apple,” Gassée argued, “but Steve is still Steve.” A few days later his wife answered a knock on the door and went running upstairs to tell him that Jobs was standing there. He thanked Gassée for the article and invited him to an event where Intel’s Andy Grove would join Jobs in announcing that NeXTSTEP would be ported to the IBM/Intel platform. “I sat next to Steve’s father, Paul Jobs, a movingly dignified individual,” Gassée recalled. “He raised a difficult son, but he was proud and happy to see him onstage with Andy Grove.”

　　 乔布斯当时一个出乎意料的维护者竟是让-路易·加西，他曾经跟乔布斯在苹果发生摩檫，后来被逐出苹果。他写了一篇文章称赞NeXT产品是多么具有创造性。“NeXT也许不是苹果，”加西说，“但史蒂夫还是史蒂夫。”几天之后，加西家来了一位访客，加西的妻子跑上楼去告诉他，史蒂夫在楼下。乔布斯感谢加西写了那篇文章，并邀请他参加一个活动，届时英特尔的安迪·格鲁夫将和乔布斯一同宣布，NeXTSTEP将被植入IBM/英特尔平台上。“我当时坐在史蒂夫的父亲保罗·乔布斯旁边，他备受尊重。”加西回忆说，“他带大儿子很不容易。看到史蒂夫跟安迪·格鲁夫站在台上，他是那么自豪和髙兴。”

　　A year later Jobs took the inevitable subsequent step: He gave up making the hardware altogether. This was a painful decision, just as it had been when he gave up making hardware at Pixar. He cared about all aspects of his products, but the hardware was a particular passion. He was energized by great design, obsessed over manufacturing details, and would spend hours watching his robots make his perfect machines. But now he had to lay off more than half his workforce, sell his beloved factory to Canon (which auctioned off the fancy furniture), and satisfy himself with a company that tried to license an operating system to manufacturers of uninspired machines.

　　 一年以后，乔布斯不可避免地改变了策略；彻底放弃硬件的制造。这是一个痛苦的决定，一如他当年在皮克斯放弃硬件制造那样。他关注产品的方方面面，但硬件才是他的热情所在。他为出色的设计心潮藤湃，痴迷于生产细节，会花上好几个小时注视着他的机器人为他制造完美的产品。但现在，他不得不解雇一半以上的人力，把他钟爱的工厂卖给佳能（佳能拍卖掉了那些时尚的家具），留得一家聊以慰藉的公司，把操作系统授权给那些生产死板机器的制造商。

By the mid-1990s Jobs was finding some pleasure in his new family life and his astonishing triumph in the movie business, but he despaired about the personal computer industry. “Innovation has virtually ceased,” he told Gary Wolf of Wired at the end of 1995. “Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages.”

到20世纪90年代中期，乔布斯在他新的家庭生活和在电影产业的惊人成功中找到了一些快乐，但是却对个人计算机产业备感失望。“创新实际上已经停止，”1995年底他对《连线》杂志的加里·沃尔夫（GaryWolf）这样说，“微软占据了市场，但几乎没有创新。苹果输了。台式电脑市场进入了黑暗时代。”

He was also gloomy in an interview with Tony Perkins and the editors of Red Herring. First, he displayed the “Bad Steve” side of his personality. Soon after Perkins and his colleagues arrived, Jobs slipped out the back door “for a walk,” and he didn’t return for forty-five minutes. When the magazine’s photographer began taking pictures, he snapped at her sarcastically and made her stop. Perkins later noted, “Manipulation, selfishness, or downright rudeness, we couldn’t figure out the motivation behind his madness.” When he finally settled down for the interview, he said that even the advent of the web would do little to stop Microsoft’s domination. “Windows has won,” he said. “It beat the Mac, unfortunately, it beat UNIX, it beat OS/2. An inferior product won.”

　　 同一时期，他在接受安东尼·帕金斯（AnthonyPerkins）和《红緋鱼》杂志（RedHerring）几位编辑采访时，也表现得阴郁沮丧。一上来，他就展示出人格中“坏脾气史蒂夫”的那一面。帕金斯和他的同事们刚到达不久，乔布斯就从后门溜出去“散步”，45分钟都没有回来。当杂志的摄影师开始拍照时，他又嚷嚷着讽刺挖苦，迫使她停下来。帕金斯后来写道：“操纵欲、自私、毫不掩饰的粗鲁，我们搞不明白他这些疯狂举动背后的动机是什么。”等他终于坐下来接受采访时，他说，即使是网络的发展也难以阻挡微软的主导地位。“Windows赢了，”他说，“很不幸，它打败了Mac，打败了Unix,打败了OS/2。一个低劣产品胜出了。