At 33, the computer wunderkind has a slick new product and sales pitch to match. It may be the most exciting machine in years. But will it sell?

It's less than a week before the most important day of his life, and Steve Jobs is doing what comes naturally: fussing over details. At a high-school gym in Berkeley, Calif., he's rehearsing the rollout that will introduce his new baby, the NeXT computer, to the world. Dressed in blue jeans and a red flannel shirt, Jobs paces back and forth, reading lines into a wireless microphone. Jobs has hired multimedia artist George Coates to stage the unveiling in San Francisco's futuristic Davies Symphony Hall. When the first slide appears on the screen, Jobs enthuses: "I really like that green." Around him, other NeXT executives chime in: "Great green. Great green."

The computer goes through its paces, playing music with the sound of alive orchestra, pulling up images as clear as photographs, retrieving quotes from a memory bank big enough to hold a bookshelf full of classics. Then a software glitch makes the image on the sleek black monitor freeze. NeXT employees tense up, expecting an infamous Jobs outburst. Jobs just stares at the screen, then shrugs. "We're hosed." he says calmly. "We'll fix that. No problem." Later, a video shows the automated assembly plant that Jobs has built to manufacture the NeXT machines. Wandering back to sit with a handful of employees, Jobs watches as robot hands install the state-of-the-art chips that will power the computer. For a second he looks almost teary. "It's beautiful," he says softly.

Steve Jobs was back last week with a slick new computer and more self-dramatization than ever. It's been more than a decade since Jobs, in his early 20s, co founded the Apple Computer Corp. and brought computing to the masses with the Apple Il. It's been four years since he turned the industry on to user-friendly displays and software with the Macintosh. Now, at 33, he's billing the NeXT as a computer that will revolutionize the higher-education market and point the industry toward the 1990s (next story). Love him or hate him, people in the computer world couldn't wait to see what Jobs had secretly worked on for three years in his Palo Alto headquarters. When a NeXT marketer called The Wall Street Journal to buy an ad for the rollout. the salesman quipped, "Why bother?"

Jobs has much more at stake than the $12 million he has invested in NeXT. He's rebuilding his reputation, too. Critics say Jobs' success at Apple was an accident. and that he is little more than a showman with a knack for packaging other people's engineering. Jobs is still smarting over his 1985 showdown with John Sculley, the CEO he recruited to Apple-and who ousted him in a power struggle. The public has tended to view Jobs as a techno-punk, immensely talented and charming but a tad arrogant. Learning from his defeat and re-emerging with a mature new style and machine would show the world that Steve Jobs is a serious computer maker, can run a company--and has finally grown up.

Photographs: A meticulous showman: The boss and his logo (top) introducing the system (bottom). Photographs by: chuck Nacke -- Picture Group

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