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Something something John Sculley?

Who was basically brought in to Apple by Steve Jobs AFAIK

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

(Sculley worked for Pepsi at the time.)

To be fair, Jobs-interregnum Apple was such a hilariously mismanaged mess that it did actually need saving multiple times over. Michael Dell's quip about "shutting Apple down and giving the money back to the shareholders" was not entirely as misguided as it sounds today.

I'm not sure I follow.

It's pretty widely recognized that Apple was circling the drain in the '90s, and things didn't turn around until they bought NeXT and put Steve in the CEO chair. Since that point, they haven't needed "saving". All these different stories you see are about the changes Steve made to the company that probably contributed to the turnaround.

I believe the common thought is that Apple got down to as little as 90 days before having to declare bankruptcy.

If Steve hadn’t made drastic (successful!) changes fast, there would be no Apple. They really were right on the edge.

Because business is hard without leveraging IBM's monopoly power. Most companies fail.