The question remains whether that was all him or a combination of Wozniak and Ive, on top of being at the right place(s) at the right time(s) (iMac, iPod, iPhone).

Also he died 15 years ago, but Apple's success (measured in market cap at least) went up more than 10x since he died (from 300-400B to 3-4T), under Tim Cook. That's arguably from the groundwork and reputation the company laid down 15 years ago, but still - few companies manage to keep growing on stuff they did 15 years ago. Oil industry notwithstanding.

You can still find articles lambasting the iphone for having a small screen, 'who would want to surf the web on their phone'.

The CEO is in large part responsible for picking what products have hope to grow the company. The iphone was far from a slam dunk, many thought it would fail. Now it's responsible for over half their revenue and they're one of the largest companies in the world.

>Then he became CEO and the company and was, finally, phenomenally successful.

I'm totally confused by your post, so you admit he became a good CEO then?

Man, everyone is demonstrably bad - until they aren't. Some things, like being CEO, are much more rare in the "try, try, try again" space, but it does seem to work like most things. My son was a terrible, demonstrably bad hitter for ~2 years. Then, all of a sudden, he was not, nor will he ever be again.

Yes. I've heard some say that SJ being fired allowed him to go out and learn to move from founder to CEO. Only when he came back to Apple did he finally have the skills and maturity to be CEO.