Wouldn't it be equally as valid for some to believe they know what Steve would do today as it is for you to believe that Tim Cook is doing the best job ever, where I just wonder whether you're also speaking about the overall impact and "goodness" of products being created after 2013 vs before 2013 (usability issues critiques and all) and not just results based on revenue generation?
Both.
Last year, I purchased the 9.7" iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, AirPods and Apple Watch, and am still happily using them both for work and outside of work. When you airplay your iPad to the classroom projector and annotate on pdf documents using the pencil, it's just a sublime user experience. Apple excels in making technology more personal for its users and I find that the Tim Cook-era of products work great for me, even though they are not the conventional computers you would expect of Apple.
And Apple's own financial results speak for themselves, but in case people need reminding, this article (although a little outdated at end 2016, does a very good job of summing up Apple's successes, and Apple has only come further since then).
https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/12/6/milking-the-iphone
That said, I recall there being a ton of outcry when Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPod (critics said he should have just stuck with Macs), the iPad (as an answer to netbooks) and the MacBook Air (no cd drive). People also said there was no way the iPhone 4 could have sported that asymmetric antennae design, and it did.
So if people did not know what Steve Jobs would have done when he was alive, I fail to see how they can suddenly become experts at what Steve Jobs would have done after he was dead. Truth is, they are simply attempting to extrapolate from what he used to do, not realising that as times change, people's priorities too change and that Steve Jobs could have very well just thrown away everything you think you know about him in response to a new business environment.
However. Ha ha. No matter how eloquent it's disagreed with: I find it astounding to feel that it's acceptable for a company like Apple to overlook serving the needs of a large group of consumers rather unhappy with the war on flexible UI/hardware interaction compared to pre-2013. I'm talking for the perspective of the company and not consumer. We're not arguing why Ferrari doesn't put out $20k entry-level cars so anyone has a shot at buying a Ferrari. We're talking about a company producing items intended for most all consumers above the poverty level and the large possibility of soon losing customer loyalties and their cash if they keep making the hardware and software experiences towards the "vague/less-intuitive/less-flexible" while expecting the hardware to do more each year....let's see how things look in 4-5 years.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on just how "large" this group of consumers who are being underserved by Apple really are. I still think it's just a fairly niche group of extremely vocal critics (led by people like Marco Arment) who just happen to enjoy a bit of fame and have outsized online followings.
Maybe the price to be paid for Apple continuing its foray into wearables and self-driving cars is neglect of the Mac and maybe it's a reasonable price to be paid in the greater scheme of things.
Not saying that Apple should suddenly just shutter its Mac department and stop selling Macs altogether, but I do think Apple can streamline its Mac line-up (perhaps offer just the MacBook Pro and iMac and maybe even the Mac Pro as a concession to pro users?) to free up manpower and resources to focus on its mobile endeavours such as AR, and Mac users will simply have to accept and adapt.
As far as the whole Steve prognostications: I think it's very fair to assume Steve would have run into the same "running out of low hanging fruit to pick and holes in the market to exploit" situation after the iPhone redefined phones and the iPad created a new niche between computer & phone (yes it's a niche and not a computer, no matter how much Apple marketers try to pretend today's iOS touch interface will ever replace a computer). So maybe he would have bought into smaller iPads, pencils, and the notch as a way to get into "bezel-less" sooner than later, etc. But no way in hell he would have ok'd the unintuitive Jony-minimalist UI/software ios7 crap that's still lingering in ios11. No way in hell. This I know for a fact, ha ha ha.
Maybe Steve would have, maybe he wouldn't. Either way, the man is dead, and really has no say in how Apple is being run.
Maybe you don't agree 100%. Maybe even Steve would have his disagreements as well. It's Tim Cook's Apple now, and like it or not, he has his own vision and his own way of running Apple as he deems fit. If you want to criticise the man, then do it in context, by looking at what Tim Cook has done in its entirety and weighing his accomplishments against his missteps, not cherry-picking certain areas (eg: why is there still no new Mac Pro?!?), blowing them out of proportion and dragging Steve Jobs into the argument.
Something like what this writer has done, with well-reasoned and level-headed arguments.
https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/1/19/grading-tim-cook
And for what it's worth, I happen to like iOS 7. iOS 6 sufficed for what it needed to accomplish back then, but its UI was becoming more outdated by the day. I can't imagine myself having to continue using iOS 6 today.
