NeXT and Apple are stories of a founder bulldozing ahead with a vision, his coming and going coinciding with the respective companies’ high and low tides. The discussions around a “thing” are framed in the context of the of the thing, the founder, and one or more people who happen to be involved (the storyteller, scribe). No thing is ever discussed in isolation without the founder, and it’s always the scribe who tells that story. You will hardly ever come across a pivotal story about NeXT or Apple without the founder being mentioned as a key figure in that story, to the point that it’s their decision as to how that story ends.
The point? The thing is meaningless. It’s the story of the founder’s reaction and the cause and effect of the founder’s choices. The thing has no gravity in and of itself. It’s meaning entirely created and destroyed by the founder.
In the case of NeXT, it is literally the company rising and falling with the presence of the founder. The weight of any thing immediately diminished with founder’s departure. Nothing remained.
We shall see what happens with Apple. It may attain a new founder, or it may not.