well I didn’t say that and I don’t agree with it. I think the innovation out of Steve Jobs’ Apple is overrated. And design language is subjective. I was never a fan of Aqua or any of the skeuomorphism Jobs liked.
You didn't say that, I did. Attention to detail and coherence in design language is as objective as it can be.
Skeuomorphic or not, Jobs or Forstall were absolute pedants, inspecting UI's under a loupe to make sure they're pixel perfect and consistent. Now you see assets flying all over the place (icons not adhering to grid, text exceeding captions, random padding etc).
Equally, product design wise, attention to detail is gone (eg look at the random screen bezels of the 2019 MacBook Pro), cadence is never ending (the iMac and Mac mini look the same as it did 10 years ago, hell, they'd even re-release the iPhone 8 as SE2 than design something new), and attributes across product lines are so inconsistent they almost look like the products of different companies – in some cases they really are the products of different companies, like the 5K LG eyesore of a screen.
It was never about "good enough" under Steve. When the Retina display of iPhone 4 was first launched, it was about 'fine print level of typography', and not "yea but if you can't see it does it even matter" compromise of the iPhone XR screen 9 years later. Too bad that the iPhone 4(S), for all its stellar leaps in technology and design aesthetics, is squarely associated with the "you're holding it wrong" ridiculousness. And all the products were conducive in creating a uniform aesthetic and value proposition.
So no, it's not about skeuomorphism or Aqua. The problem with Apple of 2019 is that they believe they are still producing the same quality of OS/hardware as when Steve would chew off the heads of the dev team for getting a font wrong.
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Cook doesn’t have to be the operations expert anymore. He’s got an extremely competent COO in Jeff Williams and no doubt a very effective team that reports to him, many of whom trained at the hands of the master.
And what about the products? Honestly, who in there cares about the products?!
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I think they are doing a much better job lately, they might have been preoccupied with that spaceship, now it's finished and we see...New MacBook Pro 16", iMac Pro, Mac Mini, new MacBook Air, Mac Pro, AirPods and more to come.
There's only one gripe here, prices went up considerably last 5 years.
These are all hygiene/maintenance fixes or breakfix updates to address negative publicity. The iMac Pro is left on the vine without any updates and the Mac mini uses the same shell since 2009. Even the Watch 5 does not have enough updates to even be called a Watch 4S. Other than meandering mea culpas they haven't released anything fundamentally new, redesigned and rethought in several years (other than the AirPods/Pro perhaps, but that's only an accessory)
