Did you read the article I linked? Sums up the current state of Apple quite nicely and demonstrates the lack of focus they are exhibiting in 2019.
There's a danger in over-generalising and reducing Jobs' hallowed advice.
In 1997, Apple were making laptops, desktops, tower systems, displays, laser printers, the Newton PDA and digital cameras - and investing in an obscure British CPU called "ARM". Every category on that list made sense for a computer company with a significant presence in DTP/multimedia/video.
At the end of the 00s, still under Jobs, they were making laptops, desktops, tower systems, a rackmount server, WiFi hubs/NAS, displays, personal music players, TV set-top boxes, tablets and phones (nothing like the Newton, no sir!) - the latter including digital cameras - and running an online music/video store, the iPhone App Store and a huge chain of high-street stores. Just as big and diverse a range, if not more. (...and those ARM chips sure came in handy). If anything has gone wrong between then and now, it isn't having a diverse range of products and a few speculative sidelines.
The
real problem in 1997 was, they were losing money hand-over-fist and couldn't
afford to sustain that range. While some of their cash problem
might have been because the Mac range was messy and confusing, it was also because (a) MacOS 9 was out-of-date, bloated and technically inferior to Windows NT (forget Win95) and the replacement, Copeland, was vapourware and (b) it was 1997, the "Wintel" monoculture was at its height and using anything other than a PC was an uphill struggle. Apple was pretty much "last man standing" when it came to non-Windows platforms - Sculley and co. actually did quite well to ensure that there was still an Apple for Jobs to return to (including making the best laptops in town).
(Its 2019 and if you walk into a PC store you see PCs, Macs, iPads, Android phones, Chromebooks... and Microsoft are even making software for
Linux - back in 1997, unless you hunted down a specialist Apple retailer you's see a beige wall of Windows PCs - you tell that to kids today...)
Consider: one of Jobs' biggest successes was the iPod - A
complete departure from Apple's core business which looked for all the world like a random side-project - which not only made Apple a metric shedload of cash on its own, also raised the profile of Apple's more traditional products via the much-documented "halo effect".
Then there was the little matter of opportunity and timing - the iMac just as personal Internet use was taking off (and when hooking up a Windows PC to the net was harder than it should have been). The iPod just as home Internet was getting fast enough to distribute digital music. The iPhone just before music-players in phones would have decimated the iPod market...
So, no, Jobs pruning the range is
not that one weird trick that can save a company. It might have helped, but so did the completely contradictory decisions to make personal audio players and phones.
The Mac business is still valuable, but the PC boom is past so it's not going to see spectacular growth. Phone/mobile growth has probably peaked. (and neither Mac or iPhone is going to keep growing for long with Apple's current policy of ignoring the competition and seeing just how much they can raise prices and cut quality before the die-hard fans jump ship). Apple
have to start looking for "the new iPod" somewhere, and it probably won't be a laptop or phone.
As for Apple TV+ - My "healthy skepticism" comes from Apple TV+ being a day late and a dollar short - they're launching it at the same time that Disney et. al. have woken up and launched services backed by their huge content portfolios. Amazon and Netflix have spent the past few years preparing for this by building up their own substantial catalogues of original content. The iPod moment has passed.
I'm wouldn't write it off yet. "Everybody who buys an iPhone/iPad/Mac/AppleTV" is quite a big initial audience, so these shows will have a good chance to prove the critics wrong. If the shows are any good, they'll still be worth money, even if the streaming service fails.
Main observation - being from the UK - the headline shows (except maybe "See") sound a bit "All American" and I'm not sure how they'll play outside the US at a time when there is quite a bit of diversity (I don't mean the social justice kind) on Netflix/Amazon etc. especially if they want to pitch "upmarket". Morning Show/For All Mankind obviously. Dickinson - well, yes she's a famous poet, but probably not on the high school curriculum so much outside the US, so I don't think a huge number international viewers are going to "get" references to her life and work...