Steve had a complex set of skills. Personally, I think one of his greatest assets was being able to push against the inertia of the herd and the bureaucracy to get things to happen. One of my favorite anecdotes was when Apple pulled the iPod mini are replaced it with iPod nano. At the time the mini was the best selling iPod and hadn't been on the market all that long. In most companies the powers that be would have pushed to keep selling that to get a better return on investment. Steve pulled it and replaced it with the nano because it was better. Better you kill your product than someone else does.
Lots of people have cool ideas about future products. Go watch The Shape of Things to Come created by H. G. Wells in 1933. You see hints of technology that has just come to pass. In about 1990 Apple put out a video, Knowledge Navigator, which shows someone using an iPad with a Siri-like assistant with a great internet connection. The telephone and iPad were combined. Dick Tracy had a watch that somewhat foretold Apple Watch.
My point is that it is not that Apple just suddenly dreamed up the iPhone, iPad, Watch, etc. in the last decade or so. Ideas for these have been around for a long time. The genius of Apple is quite complex. They have to time a product introduction for just when the technology is available to make something. Too soon and the product is a complete failure. Too late and others will beat you to it. Apple also has to instill high quality, design and integrate new products with the existing array products.
I think what most people here really want is a champion. Someone who will go to bat for the Mac product line and for macOS. Because Steve Jobs studied calligraphy in college he had an appreciation for this and pushed for Apple products to support great font rendering. If Steve hadn't been exposed to calligraphy would the original Macintosh have done such a nice job of rendering fonts? It is not that Apple couldn't do a better job of supporting the Mac. It is that there is not a loud voice in the room calling for that. Who would do this? Jony Ives? Phil? Eddy? Craig? They have their strengths and their interests and I applaud their efforts, but I don't see any of them as real champions inside Apple for the Mac platform.
Tim Cook is doing a fantastic job of keeping Apple on an even keel, delivering huge volumes of products more or less on time and keeping Apple financially healthy.
What we need is a lobbyist. A Senior VP of Macintosh who will interact with the pro users and prosumer users and industry at large and then go back to Apple, work with their design team to pull together the most useful ideas, and lobby for features that will keep the Mac at the forefront of greatness.
Anyway, my two cents.
Your two cents are worth more than that. I agree completely.
My observation is that Tim is taking Steve's Post-PC vision a bit too far, while ignoring the Mac (notebooks primarily) and attempting to merge it into iOS.
The Mac today sucks. It's a bad value proposition. They're all too expensive for what they are. They are way too limited for what they're meant to be, or rather, what they actually were before.
If Tim continues down the road I think he's in, the Mac will die and become an iPad with a keyboard.
It's funny, because iOS devices have their value spread evenly. The lowest end iPad is just as functional as the high end one. They have FIVE different form factors for that thing.
The MBPs are ALL ultrabooks, which makes them expensive. Apple should have kept the CMBPs as the 'low end' and provided something for users that need to be able to expand/upgrade/service their own machines. Same goes for other Macs.
And I think Tim is doing it all to make Apple more money. Every decision he's made with regards to Apple hardware has led to more lock-in, less manufacturing cost for them (via functionality omissions), and thus more wallet busting compensating for said manufacturing omissions on OUR end.
You need more internal storage? You HAVE to pay Apple's RIDICULOUS upcharge.
We can't decide on RAM? You BETTER pay up for Apple's RIDICULOUS upcharge.
You want to connect to something? You'll probably pay Apple for their dongles.
You have hardware issues of ANY kind? You have to go to Apple and PAY THEM to fix it.
Anything happens to your machine outside of the tiny warranty period? You might as well REPLACE the whole machine.
In short, Tim wants the Mac to be like iOS: Disposable.
