Oooo, I didn't know that. But going back to the original point, if that's true you could say that Apple was in a slightly better state than it might have appea

Oooo, I didn't know that. But going back to the original point, if that's true you could say that Apple was in a slightly better state than it might have appeared (in that it had leverage over MS that it could use that might not have been obvious at the time) but I don't think it significantly undermines the idea that Jobs did a fairly remarkable job in turning Apple around. After all, MS and many other companies had far more resources than Apple even with the settlement and none of them had the same level of success Apple enjoyed during that period (or since).