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Andy Cunningham entered his kitchen and talked him out of it.

For her good advice, she received the most dubious of rewards: she was the one who had to go out there and try to tell the impatient reporters that the speech was off.

• • •

APPLE COMPUTER BEGAN in a tract house; Next Computer was founded in a mansion a few miles away. In the early days of Apple, Steve would play Bob Dylan tunes on his guitar in the backyard while his mother, Clara, washed his baby nephew in the kitchen sink. They had the luxury of beginning in obscurity. During the early days of Next, in September 1985, his cofounders lounged on the lawn behind the mansion, reading about themselves in Newsweek. They were on the cover of the Asian edition, which they’d had specially delivered to the house. They had been slated for the American cover, too, but they were knocked off by the devastating 8.1-magnitude earthquake in Mexico.

On the early autumn days they would get some sun and then go back inside and dial away at their Rolodexes. During the daytime they would venture out without Steve to look at office spaces. This way the landlords wouldn’t recognize their fabulously wealthy proprietor and raise the lease rates. They had to sneak Steve in at night to see the buildings. They considered making a deal with the Catholic archdiocese to take over an abandoned monastery not far from the Apple campus. The building, with its gracefully proportioned bell tower rising above a straw-colored pasture, looked like it belonged in Tuscany. Working there would have been a nicely ironic twist in Steve’s personal history, since he had thought of entering a monastery (albeit a Zen Buddhist one in Japan) instead of starting Apple. Finally they rented a small structure of concrete and glass on Deer Park Road, a secluded stretch of the voluptuous Stanford hills. They would be surrounded by the scenic undeveloped open land where Steve loved to walk, where he had spent hour after hour walking with Sculley. In the divorce Sculley kept Apple, but Steve was claiming possession of the Stanford hills.

One day Steve was driving in his black Porsche with his finance executive, Susan Barnes, the only woman among the six cofounders. She had a master’s of business administration from Wharton, the top school for finance. She was in her late twenties, smart and even-tempered and quietly self-confident, which were all advantages in dealing with such a fierce-willed, emotional boss.

What bank should we use? Steve asked. They didn’t need money, because Steve was putting in $7 million, but they had to set up a payroll account and print their checks.

Let’s call Citicorp, she said. That’s a big, solid, fancy bank.

So she lifted Steve’s cellular phone and dialed the number for Citicorp. The call was patched through to a random bank officer, one of hundreds. Steve took the phone.

“This is Steve Jobs.”

The banker was utterly incredulous. Steve Jobs! Coincidentally, at that moment he had his newspaper open to an article about Steve Jobs leaving Apple and starting a new computer company. And now some guy was on the phone saying he was Steve Jobs. It had to be a practical joke. It had to be one of his buddies trying to get an easy laugh.

The banker decided to have some harmless fun toying with the obvious prankster.

Sorry, Mr. Jobs, but we don’t handle startups, he said dismissively. Call us back when you’re a real company, when you’ve got at least $50 million in annual revenues.

The phone went dead.

Steve told Susan that he knew what to do. He called the headquarters of Bank of America and asked for an appointment with the president. Steve always believed in starting at the top. And with his extraordinary fame, he could start at the top. The head of the nation’s largest bank was happy to see him, even ostensibly for the most comically trivial of matters, something they could have easily handled at any local suburban branch office.

Steve’s fame opened nearly all doors for him, and he wasn’t at all