Not unemployed at the current time, but my longest was close to 2 years. It helped that I was consulting to pay bills, which also gave me the power to be selective. My advice is that the hardest part of an extended search is saying no to the wrong opportunities when you just want a job.
Why did it need to be charitable? Jobs was hardly a saint.
I remember that era well, working for an early (potential that never happened) NeXT software developer, then one of NeXT’s 1st commercial accounts. It was a quite horrible workstation, if pretty. The pre-release rumors about it _were_ enough to push Sun into the SparcStation 1 program (heard from a very connected person at the time). So, thanks Steve.