Sometimes I wonder if there are not enough code ninjas or truly geeky geeks who spend their time poking the existing code with a stick and experimenting on new ones in Apple. I mean, sure, OS X, iOS, all those other software, cloud services, and backend infrastructures won't be here without some sophisticated work, and I'm sure most Apple engineers are very talented and experienced. When it comes to really really low level stuff, however, I suspect not enough people have the know how to really tinker the nasty innards of those beasts, bringing in fundamental changes or optimization.
For example, running Windows and OS X on the same hardware (be it Bootcamp or conversely, Hackintosh), Windows constantly outperforms OS X. Not that evident on newer setup, but you can clearly see it with an older CPU and normal HDD. Not to mention OS X gets utterly crushed in the graphics performance department.
And Android. Goddamn Android. We all remember what an absolute piece of you know what Android was, but boy does it evolve. It's got a great design guideline with Holo, its performance grew by leaps and bounds with every release and those amazing "projects", and now it's yet again focusing on UI/UX with Material Design where iOS was often deemed superior.
iOS could never be open sourced like Android, so it needs even more potent developers, geeks, and ninjas to make up for that. Chris Lattner and his LLVM and Swift are great treasures to Apple, and we need more guys like him. Weird enough, even now we're still hearing about Apple moving developers from one team to another JUST TO BE ABLE TO SHIP ON TIME. And then there's the recent chain of events... Why oh why Apple?