Almost didn't. Apple ][ revenue kept the doors open until I think it was 1986 when they were finally break-even on Macintosh. And it cost Jobs the company. Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months and if he hadn't had those 11 years at Next Inc which also went bankrupt, OS X probably wouldn't have happened.
The stars aligned for Apple a few times: I think it's Apple ][, iTunes, iPhone in that order.
Here's an example from my personal library from a 1984 text, "The coming computer industry shakeout" which sadly hasn't been digitized: http://9ol.es/computer-shakedown-219.jpg
1984-86 were pretty dark times for Apple if you're to go off of what people were saying between 1984-1986.
The stars aligned for Apple a few times: I think it's Apple ][, iTunes, iPhone in that order.
These days we reflect on the Macintosh as a success, but texts from the mid-to-late 80s did not and frankly, I trust those texts more. A fairly good specimen can be found in this 1987 text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey:_Pepsi_to_Apple (available at https://archive.org/details/odyssey00john)
Here's an example from my personal library from a 1984 text, "The coming computer industry shakeout" which sadly hasn't been digitized: http://9ol.es/computer-shakedown-219.jpg
1984-86 were pretty dark times for Apple if you're to go off of what people were saying between 1984-1986.