"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together."
"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."
I watch this speech of his every couple months. So damn good.
The success of NeXT isn't really a reason enough to think that Apple would fare better under Jobs instead of Sally. After all, it was Jobs' decision to bring Sally onboard, and there were some pretty smart people on Apple's board of directors when they cut Jobs out, it was not all empty intriguing. If there were no NeXT, Apple could have easily been ripped apart by pink/blue debate, or shrivel and die, were the engineers involved ostracized by the management.
