Photographer Doug Menuez on his three years with Steve Jobs at NeXT

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The man in the interview above with RT is photographer Doug Menuez. He spent three years capturing Steve Jobs after the legendary chief executive officer was forced out of Apple in 1985 and began work at NeXT computer. In the interview, Menuez gave first-hand accounts of how Jobs worked with engineers and his team at NeXT, and he spent an almost four-year period photographing Jobs and the company. Menuez did not keep in contact with Jobs following those years, but thousands of his pictures currently reside in Stanford’s Apple Collection archives.

Menuez told RT how the project to photograph Jobs initially began:

“He was very secretive and very controlling, but it was an opportunity that came up because he had been forced out of Apple… publicly humiliated… He going to make this comeback, putting a mainframe into a one foot cube… he told me he hoped some kid would cure cancer in a dorm room at Stanford… I thought this is the perfect moment if I’m ever going to go in and tell this story… So I pitched him my idea –follow the human side of developing the technology.”

In the interview, he was asked how Jobs felt about leaving Apple:

“He was bitter and he was angry, and at times he would rant against the “Apple tragedy”… he felt it was unfair… but at the same time, he became so excited about the new idea… he was all about doing cool stuff that was impossible… and because he believed it his engineers believed it, although they fought him all the way… it was really interesting to watch.

Was he a perfectionist?

Terrifying, but you signed up for that… they knew if they worked with Steve it was going to be the most difficult time, and the most difficult challenge…part of his genius was getting people to work above their talents… it could be abusive sometimes… it was about trust, he had a really hard time trusting…