Steve Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985 and returned in 1997. Steve Wozniak also left about around the same time, sold most of his Apple stock, and founded CL 9 in 1985. I'm not sure when Apple contracted Unisoft initially, but A/UX wasn't announced until early 1988, and there was at least a year of development underway already.

Apparently Jobs sold most of his interest in Apple immediately in 1985 in order to finance founding NeXT the same year. Jobs took a number of Apple employees with him to NeXT, but I'm not sure how long he was speculating who he wanted with him. Yada yada yada, Apple and NeXT were in negotiations by 1996. I have heard that A/UX was the first thing Jobs killed when he returned in 1997, but the final release of A/UX was version 3.1.1 in 1995, and Apple abandoned it a year later.

So if it was Steve Jobs they were hiding from, it would have either been very early in the development of A/UX (if that occurred by January 1985) or Jobs somehow started killing A/UX during early NeXT negotiations with Apple in 1996. Or Jobs had some reason to be at Apple during that period due to Pixar(?)

And if it wasn't Steve Jobs, then there was another Steve at Apple that was menacing employees between 1985 and 1996. Steve is a relatively common name, and it would be pretty interesting to learn who that was.

I am a fan of A/UX, though I didn't appreciate being forced to buy a license for it in 1989 by my university's CS department. Though the price dropped by about half by then, along with the MacII hardware, it was a very expensive purchase for a 17yo, about as much as a midrange car at the time.