Apple received early stage funding from the SBIC programme: http://www.sbia.org/?page=sbic_program_history
And, more importantly, many of the technologies used by Apple right from the first computers to the iphones were developed with government funding and used free of charge: http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2013/10/24/t-iphone-go...
And I am not even talking about the later government subsidies from American states and from Ireland in the form of massive tax breaks. Nokia didn't get away with paying a 2 percent tax on its European profits (but probably received other government funding themselves along the way).
Similarly, the Google founders' work on the pagerank algorithms on Stanford was funded by a government entity, the National Science Foundation, and they were allowed to use it commercially free of charge. And Google too, has received massive tax breaks.
The Steves were highly motivated; lack of government funding likely would not have stopped Apple from existing much as we know it now.
Just because a party was involved doesn't make 'em indispensable.
Don't confuse the fact that, during startup, a business used available public funding as just another available opportunity to leverage, vs a business that never would have started/survived without public funding.