I think it was the iPod that saved Apple from dying, but I honestly think it was Windows Vista that propelled them to the limelight (whether the criticism of Vista was valid or not).
I don't think nearly enough credit is being given to the advances they made with the Mac following Jobs' return. The original iMacs were a big deal, and they've been nailing the all-in-one desktop ever since. Likewise with their laptops. Switching to Intel and supporting dual boot, also a huge deal.
iPods were definitely a huge growth driver for the Mac, but Apple without the iPod or the benefit of Vista would still be far from dead.
What Apple did for the Mac in the late 90's saved Apple from dying in the run-out-of-money sense. The iPod and Mac OS X in the early 00's made Apple a relevant, high-growth company again.
The criticism was pretty valid as when vista came out many of the computers weren't really up to recommended requirements with laptops (probably the biggest vista seller) having celerons and 1gb of ram.
It could have gone so much better if the computers didn't seem so slow to respond.
But in addition to that there were indeed criticism that wasn't valid and any program not working or anything else wrong with the computer was blamed on vista, mac just seemed to grab a hold of these ideas and advertise in the right way (I'm a mac).
The iPod was a good thing for Apple, but the real kick start out of the dismal Performa days in consumer space started earlier with the original iMac. Some may recall Steve getting the nickname of iCEO after that.
