Hayman did a lot of WWDC presentations of WebObjects which was the only thing really keeping NeXT alive prior to the merger. He mentions elsewhere that towards the end Jobs was mostly at Pixar and NeXT was reduced to selling $50,000 WebObjects licenses but also had its first profitable quarter.
A big part of me has suspected, especially after reading biographies about him, that Pixar was simply better aligned with his creative side. NeXT was a business, one he knew well, but Pixar made things with computing and I think that really appealed to Jobs.