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Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I've Only Had Good Years' (businessinsider.com)
Business Insider: Under CEO Tim Cook's watch, Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones, booked hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, and launched new products like AirPods and Apple Watch. In fact, Cook says, he's never had a bad year as CEO of Apple. "I've only had good years. No, seriously," he said in an interview with Fast Company. "Even when we were idling from a revenue point of view -- it was like $6 billion every year -- those were some incredibly good years because you could begin to feel the pipeline getting better, and you could see it internally. Externally, people couldn't see that," he continued.
So you had Jobs who had vision. Then you have Cook who is very good at ops. He can squeeze every last cent out of everything they do.
Problem with these ops people is that they have no vision. Yea, now that he's in charge they're more profitable than ever. But product quality has suffered and they're not innovating. Not in any meaningful way, anyway.
This always ends the same way. The ops guy will get the company as efficient as he can, but they wont be doing anything new and it will take a dive.
Apple hasn't innovated since Jobs died. Don't get me wrong. Anyone following Jobs would be found wanting. But Cook is a manager, not a leader and it shows.
That must explain the premature removal of all USB 3.0 type A ports
iMac pro still has them. But it's not premature at all, things are rapidly moving to USB-C and I say good riddance to a connector you have to try five times before it plugs in right. People will never move if you don't nudge them.
the soldering of RAM on motherboards
Only on laptops.
the lack of decent Mac mini and Macbook Air updates.
Macbook Pro is thin enough is has essentially replaced the Air.
As for the Mini, I'm sure we'll see a revamp before too long. It's not like processors have had a massive leap in that time, all an update would bring is better I/O options (which still would be welcome).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple was founded by a product manager, Microsoft by an Engineer. Engineer's think features are cool. Product managers are more focused on all of it just working together seamlessly even if has far fewer features. Apple has never innovated and been the lead on any technology. It has always been the fast copier and copied other people's innovations, simplified them, rounded the edges and come out with a product which "just works".
For Apple's model to work there need to be other companies in the market doing the innovation. With the iPhone becoming a monster and capturing 90% of the profits in the smartphone market there is not much money left on the table for other companies to innovate so I do not expect any great advancements in the smartphone market.
However there are other markets like voice assistants, AI, Cars etc where Apple can take the innovations of Engineer led companies like Google, Amazon, Tesla and repackage them as iProducts which "just work". Thats where Apple's growth will come from.
**Life is too short to be serious**