I think these old articles provide valuable perspective. There's an interesting book from 1998 analyzing Apple's fall up to that point:

http://amazon.com/dp/0887309658

I'm partway through and so far it's good. The detailed analysis untainted by the company's current success is quite interesting. At that point Jobs had come back to be involved in the company but not yet officially taken over as CEO (publicly he said he wasn't up for it).