Jobs and Apple were certainly in severe cost cutting mode (and cutting in general - even profitable parts that Jobs thought diluted Apple's focus) but closing t

Jobs and Apple were certainly in severe cost cutting mode (and cutting in general - even profitable parts that Jobs thought diluted Apple's focus) but closing the library probably wasn't needed to save Apple. Librarians were a drop in Apple's cost bucket (vs. useless middle managers who survived Jobs, hundreds of millions in restructuring costs, the $75M repurchase of Power Computing's macOS license, etc.) and the productivity and morale benefit from the library was likely greater than its cost. A glib Jobsian "they should know all that already" was also simply wrong. In any case, a few years later Apple could easily afford it, but it was gone forever.