How much technical experience did Jobs actually have? Did he actually have a part in designing all the successful products or was he just a manager and marketer?
I don't mean to diss Jobs or imply that he wasn't important, but I don't clearly understand what his role was in Apple's success.
If you watch some of the presentations Jobs gave e.g. during his NeXt days it's pretty clear that he absolutely understands every bit of the technology as good as any engineering manager. The ability to combine technical knowledge with exceptional design, marketing and product development skills is what made him vital to Apple's success.
Important distinction: understanding the technology != coding. I think alot of folks who worship Jobs here believe saying he couldn't code is some sort of ultimate insult. It's not; he understood his products. I've met many programmers who have no clue about the product they're building, and some who barely grok the tech outside of their area of responsibility.
You realize that late 70s and early 80s were full of 100s companies trying to do the same exact thing as Apple right? Just like there were 100s of competitors to Facebook, Dropbox, Reddit and anything you can think of.
Building a successful business is much much harder than building a product - I'm sorry, but speaking as someone who codes, there is no shortage of good technical people really, there is a shortage of people that can build multi-billion dollar businesses from nothing.
I don't mean to diss Jobs or imply that he wasn't important, but I don't clearly understand what his role was in Apple's success.