But it's not like Jobs first stint at Apple (or really Apple itself) was necessarily such a remarkable success (at least compared to what happened when he came

But it's not like Jobs first stint at Apple (or really Apple itself) was necessarily such a remarkable success (at least compared to what happened when he came back). In the second half of the 80s and in the 90s Apple was merely the best of the also-ran. > But there were many that could have filled that role. Wasn't Apple II pretty much the thing that kept the company afloat? The Lisa was a disaster and the early Macintosh despite the impressive marketing wasn't such a great machine either. Between 1984 and 1989 Apple still sold about 3.5x more Apple 2s than Macintoshes. Of course Macs were generally 2-3x more expensive but still it seems pretty remarkable that a computer Wozniak pretty much designed singlehandedly back in 1977 remained competitive for more than 10 years with not that many fundamental changes. By the Macintosh truly successful (not compared to Wintel of course) Jobs and most of his influence on the company and it's culture etc. were long gone.