It probably would have been in worse shape. SJ needed the time to mature.
Don’t forget that as late as 1993, Apple was worth more than MS and it was going back and forth with HP to be the number one PC seller. Things started going south around the time of Windows 95 - only two years before he came back.
We can't all define "better" exactly the same way, but I think it can be agreed there were mistakes due to immaturity that would not have ocurred otherwise.
