When Jobs came back to Apple, he famously imposed a two by two product matrix. […]
There were something like 30 different Macs and PowerBooks on sale during that year because Apple was trying to hit every possible market going. And it was failing. Only die-hard Mac fans were still buying from Apple then, the company could only dream of expanding out to new markets.
[…] the audience for Apple devices is gigantically bigger, and it is gigantically more diverse. There's everything from the casual student who just prefers the idea of an iPad instead of a laptop, to the professional artists who need the power of an iPad Pro. Apple is now in the position where it can aim products at entirely different markets. And what's more, Apple is now in the position where it should.
...this is what people who love to extoll about Jobs famously slashing the product count and how modern Apple should do the same just don't get. Jobs had to do that because old Apple was failing. They couldn't sell all those models and were spinning their wheels trying to. Modern Apple has a much, much larger customer base, and is a much, much bigger and healthier company. It is now in the position to offer more models to different target audiences. Not only can it do so, but sometimes it's even strategic to do show -- the iPad Mini closed a "pricing umbrella" that allowed small, cheap tablets to carve out market space under the umbrella of more expensive big iPads. Apple closed that umbrella.
Modern Apple is not old Apple, and as such has different needs and abilities.
Jobs would be very angry with Cook and what he’s done. Jobs always said that it’s important to focus. There’s clearly a lack of that under Cook. I still remember when Steve was alive when Cook made fun of the Android phones and how fragmented that device is. Now who has a fragmented phone line?
Remember that Apple was a giant by 2009 and had resources to do whatever it wanted and yet Apple stayed focused under Jobs. Now we have multiple flavors of everything. That’s clearly a sign of someone that has no clue, just slinging crap at the wall to see what sticks. No wonder most of the senior members of Steve’s team all left. Even they can see the disaster unfolding.
There was a famous mutual fund manager from the ‘80s & ‘90s, Peter Lynch who called companies that diversify by buying other companies that do different things the act of diworsification. The same can be said of Cook in diworsifying their product lines.
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Remember that Apple was a giant by 2009 and had resources to do whatever it wanted and yet Apple stayed focused under Jobs. Now we have multiple flavors of everything. That’s clearly a sign of someone that has no clue, just slinging crap at the wall to see what sticks. No wonder most of the senior members of Steve’s team all left. Even they can see the disaster unfolding.
There was a famous mutual fund manager from the ‘80s & ‘90s, Peter Lynch who called companies that diversify by buying other companies that do different things the act of diworsification. The same can be said of Cook in diworsifying their product lines.