When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was experiencing a success drought in the years following his ousting from the company, he found himself arguing with Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow.
Around that time, Mr Jobs also made what is said to be one of the first online pizza orders, while promoting a new product.
Those are just a few of the stories unearthed by journalist and author Geoffrey Cain in his new book, Steve Jobs in Exile.
The National received an advance copy of the book, which takes a deep dive into Mr Jobs' life and NeXT Computer, the company he founded shortly after being forced out of Apple in 1985.
For most of NeXT's existence it was not a commercial success, despite having all the ingredients, as Cain points out.
Mr Jobs poured millions of his own money into the venture. Some of the best hardware and software engineers joined him. Texas billionaire and eventual US presidential candidate Ross Perot was a board member and for a few years, Mr Jobs had ample attention from customers and journalists waiting for a new product.
He even spent $100,000 on the company's logo, sparing no expense by hiring well-known graphic designer Paul Rand.
When push came to shove, however, the sleek, cube-shaped NeXT Computer was too expensive and sales were far too low.
Meanwhile Apple's revenue soared and as the early 1990s approached, the world began to forget about Steve Jobs.
In Cain's book, the failing products, projects and corporate strategies that enveloped Mr Jobs are the subject of intense focus.
He interviews former NeXT employees who rarely slept and often suffered from burnout only to watch the company haemorrhage money.
At one point, NeXT finally found some success in selling computers to the US federal government for what some claim were nefarious national security and spying purposes. Cain retells how Mr Jobs ended up having an argumentative interview with Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist turned technology reporter, about the ethics of selling computers for such purposes.
“They sat in a conference room together. Steve sat on the neighbouring seat, one of his knees bobbing on his chair,” Cain writes. Mr Jobs did not waste time showing his notoriously mercurial attitude.
“You want to talk about our marketing strategy … good, I want to talk about it too since you're confused,” the Apple co-founder pointedly told Barlow.
Cain goes into great detail about the meeting, which occurred at a low-point in Mr Jobs' professional life, and contrasts it to his eventual return to Apple when he saved the company with a string of products that propelled the company to incredible prosperity.
“Steve had a really eclectic group of people surrounding him and he could often put on a new mask and appeal to these different groups,” Cain said in an interview with The National. This explained how Apple's co-founder could easily go from sparring with a lyricist from the Grateful Dead to convincing federal bureaucrats to buy more computers.
Throughout Steve Jobs in Exile, there are new stories explained that seasoned Apple and Steve Jobs aficionados will find insightful, despite the many books about the company's history.
Cain tells how at the dawn of the internet in 1996, Mr Jobs' company, which had just shut down its hardware division several years before, started to find success with software that made e-commerce relatively easy, WebObjects.
Cain spoke to people involved in a news conference where Mr Jobs showed off the WebObjects software to order a pizza over the internet, which was practically unheard of at the time.
CyberSlice, one of the first food-delivery start-ups, used WebObjects to make it possible.
“Steve would be the first person to order pizza on the system,” Cain writes. NeXT had invited journalists to watch it all unfold, but there had been uncertainty over whether any would show up.
But even at this low point in Mr Jobs' career, he could still draw media attention, and the internet pizza order worked perfectly.
“As surprised as he was to see the press, the press was surprised to see a real delivery driver appearing from the wings,” Cain explains.
The contrast between Mr Jobs using the internet to order a pizza in 1996 in front of a dozen reporters and later unveiling the iPhone in front of thousands in 2007, is notable.
NeXT failed, but the strong argument Cain makes is that the years of failures are what made Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1997 so remarkable.
As is well known, as it went to the brink of collapse in the mid 1990s, Apple bought NeXT in 1997. It used the company's technology to create a new version of MacOS, and propelled Mr Jobs to Apple's chief executive.
It is a turnaround story that few people would have predicted, and to this day is difficult to believe.
The author also sorted through thousands of never-before-seen documents from Apple's corporate archive that the company donated to Stanford University.
“The collection is enormous,” Cain recalled. “There are boxes and boxes of Apple material, and I couldn't get through all of it.”
Towards the end of his book, Cain looks at an episode shortly after Mr Jobs returned to Apple, when it was still struggling, and he answered a direct question from an exhibition attendee who criticised the company for cancelling projects.
Video of the exchange has been shared and viewed millions of times on the internet. Cain points out it is often presented as how Mr Jobs deals with a heckler, but actually he is being very clear about his failures at NeXT and what he has learnt about success in business.
“It's one of the most vivid examples that shows the transformation he went through and the lessons he learnt at NeXT,” Cains said.
Steve Jobs in Exile is published on May 19 by Penguin Random House.
