It's interesting how much of that happened post-acquisition, though. Holding NeXT from 1987 - 1996 = max 3x return. Holding AAPL from 1996-present = 340x return. This return was available to ordinary people on the public stock markets, too - if you were an average Joe who put $60K into Apple in 1996, you would now have Ross Perot's initial $20M investment sitting in your pocket.
Sure, but how much was Perot being lucky vs. him being smart? If Apple had gone with acquiring Be instead of NeXT (which I think was a distinct possibility), Perot's investment could quite possibly have ended up a write-off.
Less flippantly, it was a smart bet to make at the time even though things could have gone differently, since we (now) know there was a possible world (ours!) in which it went X1000.
