Good point .
Maybe it's even possible that Apple could maintain that Mac market share without an MP .
But I doubt - possibly due to personal bias - that Apple can do it without a flagship professional workstation .
With such a limited lineup, Apple might lose the majority of corporate customers in a fairly short period of time .
That includes the recepionists' iMacs, field techs' laptops, trainees not using OSX, personal computers not purchased due to lacking exposure to Macs at work, etc ..
Arguably that trend has already started some time ago .
I absolutely agree .
Let's not forget it was Jobs who declared the iPad the future of computing .
I believe Cook worked in sales and marketing for most or all of his career, regardless of his education .
But as you said , that's not necessarily a bad thing - unless it unbalances the priorities inside a company that makes a product more complex than ball hats .
In that respect the above linked Jobs interview is spot on ( disregard the irrelevant monopoly part ) .
As for industrial design, that goes hand in hand with marketing strategy at today's Apple .
The original unibody MB-Xs where marvolous both in function and appearance, for example, now the sales/marketing and design guys have reduced the engineers (and yes, the market research guys too ) to cobble together pretty shiny things that kind of work but don't really have to be great at anything but looks .
