How Steve Jobs saved Apple, in 39 photos

Apple co-founder Steve JobsAlessia Pierdomenico / ReutersThis week, Apple officially hit the $1 trillion mark — making it the first American company to do so, ever. 

So much of that success is due to the vision of Steve Jobs, the late Apple cofounder. Without him, Apple as we know it today might not even exist.

Once upon a time, Apple was a disaster, chewing through CEOs and delivering one bad quarter of financial results after another.

In 1996, knowing he had to do something dramatic, then-Apple CEO Gil Amelio negotiated a deal to buy NeXT, the computer startup operated by an exiled Jobs, in hopes that he would bring some much-needed direction to the company.

Instead, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio’s resignation. Jobs had decided that if Apple were to be saved, he would be the one to do it — even if it meant getting help from the company’s rivals at Microsoft.

Here’s what happened next.