Actually steve didn't leave apple and come back for the iMac. He was ousted in a hostile takeover by that Pepsi guy Jobs hired as his second in comand. He loved Apple, it was his baby, but the stockholders were greedy and figured if they got rid of him they would make a mint.

Job's was soooo pissed of he sold off all of his Apple stock except for one share out of spite. They asked him back to Apple in order to save it and Jobs came in as the iCEO were he has remaind till this day (actually I don't know, did Jobs ever drop that title?).

Anyway...

At least in the beginning of the Apple resurection, Jobs worked for basically free. And I belive he still does today, his sallary is like nil, and his stock is also like nil. (Like I said, at least when he started as iCEO).

And as far as M$ owning stock in Apple. This was one of the consesions made by microsoft so Apple would drop the lawsuit against those rip-off bastards. Microshit HAD to buy Apple stock, and furthermore it was non-voting stock, microshit has no say in ANYTHING apple does.

As a matter of fact, Apple has been getting quite vocal recently in decrying some of Redmond Beast's tactics.

Apple was one of the first to tell the DOJ not to accept M$ oh so generous offer of distributing their Wintell Borgs to schools. And now Apple has joind in the Class action Lawsuit by AOL Time Warner against M$.

oh and.... Microsoft sucks ass!! OS X rulz :-)

whatever