Jobs immediately put people he trusted into the top ranks at Apple. “I wanted to make sure the really good people who came in from NeXT didn’t get knifed in the back by the less competent people who were then in senior jobs at Apple,” he recalled. Ellen Hancock, who had favored choosing Sun’s Solaris over NeXT, was on the top of his bozo list, especially when she continued to want to use the kernel of Solaris in the new Apple operating system. In response to a reporter’s question about the role Jobs would play in making that decision, she answered curtly, “None.” She was wrong. Jobs’s first move was to make sure that two of his friends from NeXT took over her duties.

喬布斯立即開始把他信任的人安排到蘋果的高層位置。“我想確保來自NeXT的真正優秀的人，不會被當時在蘋果擔任髙級職位的沒那么優秀的人從背后捅刀子。”他回憶說。曾經贊同蘋果選擇Sun公司Solaris系統而不是NeXT的埃倫·漢考克，在喬布斯的“笨蛋名單”上位列前茅，尤其是她仍然想在蘋果的新操作系統中采用Solaris的核心技術。當一個記者問她在這一抉擇中喬布斯將扮演什么角色時，她草率地回答，“沒有角色。”她錯了。喬布斯的第一步動作，就是確保用他從NeXT帶來的兩個朋友接替了她的職責。

　　To head software engineering, he tapped his buddy Avie Tevanian. To run the hardware side, he called on Jon Rubinstein, who had done the same at NeXT back when it had a hardware division. Rubinstein was vacationing on the Isle of Skye when Jobs called him. “Apple needs some help,” he said. “Do you want to come aboard?” Rubinstein did. He got back in time to attend Macworld and see Amelio bomb onstage. Things were worse than he expected. He and Tevanian would exchange glances at meetings as if they had stumbled into an insane asylum, with people making deluded assertions while Amelio sat at the end of the table in a seeming stupor.

　　 他指定他的好朋友阿維·泰瓦尼安負責軟件工程。硬件方面，他找來了喬恩·魯賓斯坦，當年NeXT還有硬件部門時，魯賓斯坦擔任同樣的職務。當喬布斯直接給他打電話時，他正在英國的斯凱島度假。“蘋果需要幫助，”喬布斯說，“你想加入嗎？”魯賓斯坦的確很想。他及時趕回來參加Macworld大會，也看到了阿梅里奧在臺上出丑。形勢比他預想的還糟。他和泰瓦尼安常常在會議中交換眼神，感覺仿佛是誤入了精神病院，大家都在說著瘋話，而阿梅里奧坐在桌子的盡頭，一副神志不清的樣子。

　　Jobs did not come into the office regularly, but he was on the phone to Amelio often. Once he had succeeded in making sure that Tevanian, Rubinstein, and others he trusted were given top positions, he turned his focus onto the sprawling product line. One of his pet peeves was Newton, the handheld personal digital assistant that boasted handwriting recognition capability. It was not quite as bad as the jokes and Doonesbury comic strip made it seem, but Jobs hated it. He disdained the idea of having a stylus or pen for writing on a screen. “God gave us ten styluses,” he would say, waving his fingers. “Let’s not invent another.” In addition, he viewed Newton as John Sculley’s one major innovation, his pet project. That alone doomed it in Jobs’s eyes.

　　 喬布斯不經常來辦公室，但是他經常給阿梅里奧打電話。一旦他成功地把泰瓦尼安、魯賓斯坦等他信任的人安插在髙管位置上后，他就把注意力轉向了雜七雜八的產品線。他的眼中釘之一就是牛頓（Newton），這是一款手持個人電子設備，宣稱有很好的手寫識別率。其實它也并非如大家玩笑中的以及《杜斯別里家族》（Doonesbury、連環畫里說得那么糟糕，但是喬布斯討厭它。他很鄙視用手寫筆在屏幕上寫字的想法。“上帝給了我們十支手寫筆，”他會揮舞著他的手指說，“我們不要再多發明一個了。”再加上，喬布斯把牛頓看做是約翰·斯卡利的主要發明，是斯卡利最喜愛的項目。僅這一點，就足以讓它在喬布斯的眼里永無出頭之日。

　　“You ought to kill Newton,” he told Amelio one day by phone.

　　 “你應該把牛頓砍掉。”一天他打電話給阿梅里奧說。