It's not a direct correlation, but I think they were more more making a sarcastic but accurate observation that Apple is making the news cycles with what most would agree are trivial things en masse, while ignoring the things that truly matter, product innovation.
I agree, it's very weird lately that Apple has been lagging in:
-iPhone vs competition (SGS 7, and SGS 8, and Pixel, etc etc etc)
-Mac Pro (any major high end computer) with 4 year old specs
-Macbook Pro vs competition (any high end laptop on the market) with 2 year old processor\ram
-iMac vs competition (Surface Studio)
-iPad vs competition (Surface Pro)
-Routers (killed)
-Monitors (killed)
-Apple TV 2 years old now (and still no single provider login for 99% of Americans as promised in 2015)
-iPod lineup untouched since 2015 (2 years)
-iOS largely unchanged in 2 years
-macOS largely unchanged in 6 years
-mac Mini untouched in 3.5 years (solution for one who doesn't want to buy a $5000 Pro?)
But hey, it's great Apple is focusing on things like:
-Taking a full year to add water resistance to Apple Watch 2
-Build a Beats One studio in New York
-Replacing gun emoji with squirt gun
-Adding "multicultural" emojis
-Adding a red iPhone to the line and changing all major city billboards to show it off
-A revolutionary "touch bar" with virtually no use
-1 year to make a new iPhone with no new features except a removal of headphone jack, price hike
-AirPods (3 months delayed)
-Beats X (5 months delayed)
-A new campus which analysts say Apple will never fully occupy
-Outspoken against Trump's policies while employing over 20,000 H1B visa workers to avoid labor cost
I guess that's all I have. Reading through the list it's really depressing, especially if you go back and look at Apple's release history in a set of years like 2000-2005, or 2005 to 2010 and then compare it to the release history of 2012-present. It really is a different company today.
The main issue here looking at priorities and revenue, is that Apple is now focusing on services (Beats One, iTunes, Payment Services, etc) for a bulk of their revenue. That worked for a company like HP because they went to a service model and when providing Business Services, it works because businesses are a lot more sticky, whereas consumer services can be gone in an instant, as soon as "the next best thing" comes out... And for Apple, it's super scary because their services are 100% reliant on Apple products. You don't buy a Samsung Phone and buy books\movies\songs from iTunes. You don't buy a Microsoft tablet and buy Office from Apple. You don't buy a Dell computer and subscribe to iCloud storage, and you don't use ApplePay with a Google Pixel phone. So once someone departs the ecosystem, there will be a period of time and then the revenue will drop from the big money maker, the services. Sadly Apple isn't seeing this yet, as they lose iPhone, tablet, and computer marketshare, but rest assured, it will come.