With all the recent software, hardware and quality control issues with the iPhone, this is an interesting perspective on whether Apple has "jumped the shark". From SNL skits to Conan Obrien, the brand has certainly taken a beating recently.
http://qz.com/5306
The author spends a lot of time fantasizing about how a board of directors meeting at Apple should go, in his opinion. But, he's not a director. He's a disgruntled user with an outsize sense of entitlement, who feels that Apple personally owes him something.
Apparently, he's a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, but evidently WSJ didn't want this piece. So he had to get it "published" on some also-ran wired.com wannabe site.
I have three words for this guy: Over Five Million.
Also found this short read on "missing Steve" interesting in explaining some of these issues.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/10/05/i-miss-you-steve-jobs/
And this author is glossing over everything recent towards the end of Steve Jobs' life. No, Steve didn't "learn." Mobile Me was a fiasco; I know, I'm one of the initial users who stuck through it. The iPhone almost never had an app store, because Steve thought HTML5 web apps would be enough. And never including Flash, which I do agree was the right thing to do, was a HUGE gamble would could've easily gone the wrong way and spelled iOS' demise as a significant force in the mobile market.
And lets not forget WHY Apple went its own way with Maps: because Steve felt that Google betrayed him, and he wanted to avoid depending on his "enemy" for anything. In-house Maps has Steve Jobs' personal vendetta written
all over it. The conception, the hiring of the talent, and the development all began and progressed significantly while Steve was alive and in control of the company.
With the momentum there and the Google-Apple relationship already being what it was, Cook pretty much has had to see it through. Arguably yes, he should've waited a year. But this isn't entirely on Cook's plate.
Yet all of these things are never mentioned. It's just more of the same elevating-Steve-to-sainthood BS that whitewashes the Steve-era Apple into perfection, and exaggerates the post-Steve, Tim Cook-era Apple a this floundering entity. Both of which are outright false.
