The lagging supply of new products is honestly killing their image. I can't recall seeing as many complaint threads (across the web not just here) about people waiting for new phones, ipads, and even some newly released computers within the past year.
There's no such lagging supply of new products. Apple has been churning them out at least as fast as they did during the Jobs era. "Journalists" and bloggers, however, have created a fiction that Jobs turned the world upside down every 6 months. Not true: Apple does revolution by evolution, incrementally, most years. Always has. (Remember: most "journalists" are selling ads by way of "entertainment" more that fact, these days. They want a constant stream of excitement and drama. What they want is very different from what makes a successful company or great products.)
Similarly, the media bends over backwards to grade non-Apple products on a curve, while seizing on any small Apple non-story as a "crisis" or "-gate." It's called creating a narrative.
Some of those "journalists" might like to think they are killing Apple's image with their fictions. But they're making only a small dent. The general buying public just knows their iPad works great.
Glad this thread has held true to common MR protocol:
-Article praising Apple as the best: GO APPLE!!!!
-Article suggesting Apple being beat by competition: question the accuracy of the statistics.
The truth is what the truth is. Anyone should ALWAYS question stories that appear to go against observable reality.
There's a weird trend in journalism today where reporting/opinion/analysis is supposedly "balanced" if it gives equal weight to both "truth" and "fiction." As if those two "sides" are equal. But that's an unskeptical, unintelligent approach.
You will sometimes find mindless zealotry from Apple fans, and (more often) from Apple haters. But if that's all you see, then you are overlooking the REAL reasons to see Apple as a success and a provider of unmatched products.