dominant player in the workstation business.

The re-positioning came too late, and it did nothing to improve the disastrous state of the company’s financials. They were still spending money like crazy, as exemplified by their new offices facing a marina in Redwood City and its free-standing staircase designed by I.M. Pei’s architectural firm. But they were hardly selling: their revenues for 1990 were as low as $28 million (in comparison, Sun made $2.5 billion that same year). In addition, NeXT’s deal with IBM was canceled, as it proved difficult for two such radically different companies to cooperate. Steve was still suspicious of Big Blue:

I’m not stupid enough to give you everything I have, when you have 27,000 salespeople.

quoted in Randall E. Stross’ Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing