In many ways modern Apple is largely Next. The Apple that was dying when he returned largely faded away. Folks forget that Apple was literally days away from simply going bust. One of the most amazing comeback stories in the history of business.

Let's not be overly dramatic about that period. Apple was not days away from going bust. They were months away from filing bankruptcy. They were still a multi-billion dollar company even then. They just had very bad supply chain management. A bunch of old Macs sitting in warehouses not selling and too many people on payroll without any clear objectives. As Steve put it, "the ship was sinking and Gil (D'Amelio) was worried about which direction we were pointing."

The Apple board had hired a series of presidents who, in the short term, were good for the stock, but bad for the company strategically. The one good thing they did was hire a guy who didn't give a shit about any of that, tore up the old products and wanted a clean start. Thus, the iMac and iBook was born.

Apple was NeXT but not anymore. All the NeXT people were pushed out. Turns out, most of the work was being done by the NeXT people. Probably when Scott Forstall gets stabbed in the back by Tim Cook, that was the end of the NeXT era of Apple.

True but people also forget Microsoft invested a lot of $ into Apple to keep it going. M/S did that so they could point to Apple as a competitor during their anti-trust trials.

That investment gave Jobs time to turn Apple around, otherwise it would be gone.