Steve Jobs, without any doubt. Apple's renaissance wasn't so much about technology as about an entrepreneur at the top ( instead of a manager) who could turn th

Steve Jobs, without any doubt. Apple's renaissance wasn't so much about technology as about an entrepreneur at the top ( instead of a manager) who could turn the ship around. A solid UNIX operating system with a well-designed UI certainly helped in terms of technology. As did Objective-C. Technologically, Apple's achievements would've been difficult to realise with their classic Mac OS (which Apple knew quite well as they had been shopping around for a new operating system technology for quite some time at that point). NeXTSTEP and Objective-C probably hit a sweet spot there, albeit one that would only come to fruition years later. I doubt Apple's current success would've been possible (in the way it turned out to be at least) with BeOS (another serious contender at the time) or Linux.