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After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT and spent heavily on a perfectionist workstation, the black magnesium NeXT cube launched in 1988, built in a highly automated factory, which sold far below expectations. NeXT abandoned hardware in 1993 to focus on its NeXTSTEP software, and in late 1996 Apple bought NeXT for roughly $400 million, bringing Jobs back and making NeXT's software the foundation of later Mac operating systems.
The book argues that the leader who returned to Apple in 1997 was shaped by the humiliations of the NeXT years, not only by his earlier Apple successes. In the book's account, repeated commercial setbacks and near-insolvency taught Jobs discipline and focus that he had lacked as Apple's young founder, and this learning made his later record possible.
The book depicts Jobs's early NeXT choices, such as costly aesthetic details, an expensive factory and delays chasing an ideal machine, as a major factor in the company's cash burn and missed market window. It presents the painful correction of these habits, including accepting narrower focus and cutting unprofitable lines, as part of how Jobs matured as an executive.