They did create a pro workflow team, and there have been changes. I'm sure we'll have to wait another couple of years for more people to leave Apple and write articles to tell us just what was going on at Apple during those years that they were so apparently rudderless.*
But I also think Apple is leaning harder into the concept of "pro" as "high end". If you need gobs of power, I suspect the new Mac Pro will absolutely fit that bill (otherwise they would have just said "The Studio is good enough" and called it a day,) and for the vast majority of people, even many pros, it would have. But the bigger issue is flexibility. Apple seems to be returning to an area where, as long as you're willing to pay, you can get that (the thicker, more port-filled MBPs, or the extra ports on the Studio.) Realistically the only things the Mac lineup is now missing is internal expansion and upgradeable components. The problem is that both of those (and especially the latter) are at odds with their consolidated approach to computing across the rest of the lineup. For the vast majority of users, the Apple Silicon Macs are better than the Intel machines they replaced. For the people who want to upgrade their RAM, or use an eGPU, or upgrade their GPU, or stick in a PCIe slot, they're not. What percentage of pros that really is, and how much Apple is willing to bend, is unclear, and why I think the 8,1 will be so interesting (and hopefully closer to the 7,1 than the Studio, but we will see.) I can't imagine they would sell a ton of $5K+ computers if there's no possibility of expansion, because you could get a significant percentage of the power for much cheaper if there's no other benefits. I mean I went with an eGPU + Mac mini setup just because financially it made more sense where I could just chuck the mini every two years and get another one and still come out ahead on cost versus loading up my Mac Pro, and since I'm only doing some freelance work versus making the machine my livelihood I couldn't justify it.
I guess I just don't agree Apple is declining, though I will admit we won't
really know except with hindsight; certainly Ballmer's Microsoft had a couple years where their financials hid the truth of the company, and Jobs himself felt that Sculley did the same. But Apple hasn't really repeated Sculley's mistakes—they've grown their market share
and profits, whereas Jobs felt Sculley prioritized the latter and hurt the former, leading to the death spiral (and then leading to the clones desperation move, where they were outclassed on product
and price.) Those market conditions just don't exist right now. Apple is an increasingly novel product with no peer or clear competitors (that is, of course, not really any consolation if they also aren't targeting your needs.)
I guess I don't disagree with your thesis, but I just don't think the actual conditions match enough for it to hold true. Apple sends all those product samples to YouTubers who don't really actually need that power, but clearly are the tastemakers (and we are all old and irrelevant
) I do think Apple would do better to pare back its products and make it clearer in areas (the Mac I think outside of legacy Cook products has done this pretty well, though we don't really know what the "final form" of the lineup will be post-transition; the iPad lineup makes incredibly little sense to the point I think even regular people rather than enthusiasts have issues.) But to some degree for a growth-related company it makes sense to spread out and capture more dollars. Maybe this is going to be another part of the cycle where they'll have to get burned and hurt a bit before they refocus their attention.
If there's any existential threat to Apple right now, I'd say it's their reliance on China, combined with the threat that regulators might try to break up their vertical integration and thus kneecap the quality of their products at a fundamental, bedrock level. An Apple that can't make hardware and software together defeats much of the point of what modern Apple is good at. A secondary problem I think is that they aren't willing to support iOS as a peer to MacOS (no pro apps so they're ceding the entire market to competitors) but I dunno how much that matters, because pros again.
*It still does boggle my mind, especially rereading the development of the iMac and G4 Cube... the Ive of the late 90s and early 2000s seems strongly in favor of simplicity while
still believing in modular flexibility; I'm not really sure if it was the loss of Jobs that removed a more practical element from Apple's decision-making or not. Jobs and Ive created a culture where the designers absolutely dominated the engineering side of Apple, but in the early years that didn't actually result in anything like the "total thin appliance" Apple we've gotten. I wonder how much of that is boredom, or how much is trying to push the envelope as much as possible to break through to a new paradigm.
