OOC: Nice idea, but Apple weren't like that in 1996/7. If anything, they were declining because they were copying the Windows 'beige box' approach and making 'general purpose PCs'. The gadgetry and high prices kicked off in the early 2000s.
OOC: Remember the
Newton?
Apparently Steve Jobs entered talks to return to Apple in 1996 - they broke down because of his infamous ego and how far up shit creek they were by then. If he'd come back, could he have worked that magic of his?
Do you think Jobs would have been able to keep Apple out of the PDA Market? Or... maybe he could have helped them make it sell. That was a huge gamble they took, trying to compete with Palm with the Newton II. Adding color was a nice idea, but it raised the prices way too high.
But, considering what happened to the Palm when the second wave PDA's came out from Microsoft, Research in Motion and Handspring, I doubt that Apple could have done much better.
Unless they jumped into the music player business like CaliBoy suggested, just in time for Napster and iMusic [1] and the M-Pods. Or better yet... maybe they could have jumpstarted the tablet field back when it first started slumping in the mid '00's.
I guess it doesn't matter though, as most of that stuff didn't start until several years after they were gone, they'd have to survive longer in the first place. Not to mention, it would taken real vision to come out with competitive products in those crowded fields. Sure, Apple did it in the '80's. But, even if Jobs could have been able to repeat that success, it's unlikely that anything they'd do could convince him to come back. He didn't seem interested in the corporate world anymore -- his focus in the last decade of his life was pretty much on his third world philanthropy.
[1] Just realized that with Apple going down in '97, there's no IMac, which means "I-" is now available to other companies.