Apple is at the first major cross-roads since the passing of its late co-founder Steve Jobs 12
years ago. It finds itself still largely dependent on the product lines and businesses that Jobs left behind. Its Vision Pro has received mixed reviews on launch, while it is also facing several other headwinds including a major lawsuit against what the DOJ claims are its anticompetitive practices.
People need to stop holding Jobs up as some deity of tech. He was a marketing and hype man that was in the right place at the right time and knew how to take advantage of that luck. Nothing more, nothing less. It is equally possible his leadership style would have squandered the opportunities Apple has had since his death had it been him and not Cook in charge.
By any metric other than “line must always go up” Apple is doing just fine.
“Oh no, they haven’t found another multi hundred billion dollar product to release since the iPhone, even though there are no signs that the iPhone won’t continue to be a very profitable business for years and years to come…better go dig up Steve jobs, shove a stick up his back, magic his corpse back to life, and beg him to save the shareholders profit margins”, the horror.
He was very much the Elon Musk of his times, and it’s very possible he would have gone down the same route of extremist views and decisions that completely failed because of his egoism.
He died because he didn’t listen to his doctor’s advice. That is somewhat extreme.
Had pancreatitis because of his diet. A diet in which he thought would magically avoid creating body odor.
It turned into cancer. He lucked out that it was a rare form of treatable pancreatic cancer with a 90% survival rate 5 years out. Which is abnormal as most forms of pancreatic are essentially a death sentence. Survival rate past 3 years is under 10% for the more common variants.
Stuck to his diet anyway. Ignored his doctors. Died to an illness he had a 90% chance of beating because he knew better.
And to top it all off, it didn’t help his body odour at all. He stank.
Kinda crazy, because we figured out deodorant a while ago.