> For over a decade he had a string of public failures
I'm not sure if NeXT's history is a failure or the building of a foundation. Something similar happened with Pixar: Steve bought it in 1986, Toy Story was released in 1995.
Before TS, Steve had already sold the hardware side of Pixar, the staff had to be cut in half, and Jobs was still wondering whether he should resell Pixar in 1994.
1980: Apple III released, bombs and is killed in 1984
1982: Jobs is kicked out of the Lisa Project, joins the Macintosh project
1984: Mac released. It is overpriced and has tepid sales.
1985: Kicked out of Apple
1989: First NeXT cubes released. They are overpriced and see slow sales
1991: NeXTStation released. NeXT still has tepid sales.
1993: NeXT hardware cancelled, OS ported to multiple other platforms with little success. Only the Intel port survives. Releases OpenStep for Windows.
1996: NeXT is bought by Apple.
For over a decade he had a string of public failures to match every success.
Nowadays Apple hits home run after home run and disrupts multiple industries. Imagine how much he learned from each failure.