Except we’re not near the level of confusion the old Mac lineup in the early to mid 1990s created.
Gil Amelio was only CEO of Apple for 500 days, he inherited that mess from the tag team of John Sculley and Michael Spindler who wreaked havoc on the Apple product line from 1990-1996. Those two created all those different product lines: just look at the Performa versus a PowerMac, not much difference there right? Just branding.
Amelio pushed for the NeXT acquisition, bringing Steve Jobs back and hiring Fred Anderson as CFO. Funny enough, Jobs gets a lot of credit for quite a few initiatives that Amelio started, which included simplifying the product line and hoarding cash.
One could say, if we didn’t have Gil Amelio cleaning up the trash in Apple in those 500 days, things would be very different. He was key to bringing Jobs back to the company, no one else wanted him or NeXT. Amelio pulled off a giant financing deal with Goldman Sachs that put $661 million into Apple coffers at a time when they had less than three months to stay open; even Jobs said it was masterful and he could not have done it.
Amelio really set a sturdier stage for Jobs than what he was given. Without Amelio, there’d be no Apple.