Were in they right place at the right time, or did they mold the future to such an extreme, that in hindsight it seems as if they were in the right place at the right time?
Timing matters. Later example - many things had to come together for the ipod to be a success as well as the iphone and for that matter the ipad. While there is no question that Jobs did much to mold this, there were many other factors such as the price of components and technology the products relied on. So you can't "mold" anything without the proper materials.
Much of what we have today wouldn't be possible w/o broadband. Instagram wouldn't exist unless digital camera technology was developed to the point it had. Facebook became immensely popular because of digital photos. Wouldn't happen if people had to scan photos to get them on Facebook.
I don't think so because you have to remember that there was a lot of other companies at the time working in the same space. Just an example would be Commodore that was actually much more successful in the 80s than Apple. There were many others with similar ideas.
Obviously these companies lasted while others disappeared due to bad management, competition etc... It's hard to say that without Apple and Microsoft, the micro-computer revolution would not still have occurred.
Much of what we have today wouldn't be possible w/o broadband. Instagram wouldn't exist unless digital camera technology was developed to the point it had. Facebook became immensely popular because of digital photos. Wouldn't happen if people had to scan photos to get them on Facebook.