In January 1984, a young man in a black bow tie stood on a stage and pulled a small beige box out of a bag.

The room erupted.

The machine spoke: “Hello.”

It was the Macintosh, and the man was Steve Jobs.

He was 28 years old.

Apple was still fighting giants like IBM. The famous “1984” commercial had just aired during the Super Bowl. The company positioned itself as the rebel, the pirate ship challenging the corporate navy. Jobs believed computers should be beautiful, personal, and human.

He was intense. Demanding. Magnetic. Uncompromising.

And within a year, he would be forced out of the company he helped build.

The Exile Between the Stages

After being pushed out of Apple Inc. in 1985, Jobs didn’t disappear.

He started NeXT. The computers were beautiful and advanced — but commercially, they struggled.

He bought and grew Pixar, turning it into one of the most successful animation studios in history.

He failed.

He learned.

He refined his taste.

He understood teams.

He understood patience.

He understood leverage.

When Apple acquired NeXT in 1997, Jobs returned, not as the emotional prodigy, but as a sharpened operator.

The company was near collapse.

He simplified everything. Cut products. Focused the lineup. Built systems. Rebuilt culture. Strengthened supply chains. Negotiated aggressively. Controlled the ecosystem.

By 2007, Apple wasn’t just making products.

It was orchestrating industries.

Two Versions of the Same Man

The 1984 Jobs was brilliant but combustible.

The 2007 Jobs was still intense, but precise.

The first believed great products were enough.

The second understood that product, timing, distribution, software, partnerships, and narrative all had to align.

The first wanted to prove himself.

The second had nothing left to prove.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

The second Steve Jobs exists because the first one failed.

Without the firing.

Without the humiliation.

Without the detour through NeXT and Pixar.

Without years of being outside the company he loved.

There is no iPhone launch moment.

The world remembers the calm, commanding figure in 2007.

But that man was built by the chaos of 1984.

The Idea of Becoming

We like polished legends. We prefer the final form.

But becoming is rarely clean.

Scars are not detours from the journey.

They are the journey.

The early Jobs had vision.

The later Jobs had vision plus restraint.

The early Jobs had ambition.

The later Jobs had discipline.

The early Jobs had ego.

The later Jobs had perspective.

Experience didn’t just make him older.

It made him dangerous in a different way, controlled, strategic, and focused.

The Lesson

If you are building something, a company, a career, a life, understand this:

Your first version will not be your best version.

You may be talented and still not ready.

You may be right and still get removed.

You may build something great and still fail.

That does not mean the story is over.

The pain, the rejection, the missteps: they are shaping you into someone capable of carrying bigger responsibility.

The Steve Jobs who released the Macintosh needed to exist so the Steve Jobs who released the iPhone could emerge.

Experience is expensive.

But it is worth it.

Because the version of you that survives it, and learns from it  is the one the world eventually recognizes.