I really really had hoped that somehow, magically, Jobs' death wouldn't hurt Apple's trajectory, but things don't seem to be playing out that way.
Right. They only managed a pathetic trippling in market cap since he died and have only dominated a single new industry (they're now the biggest watch company in the world by revenue, just from watches). How disappointing.
Wasn't talking about financial trajectory.
Ok, what then, Technology? None of the other handset makers are even close. 3D face recognition, computational photography, augmented reality, health, CPUs, security, privacy,display and build quality, App ecosystem. They're ahead of the pack across the board. The new multitasking, drag-and-drop and inter-app communications stuff in iOS 11 is so far ahead of Android it's almost cheating.
Apple under Jobs showed polished deliverables to customers. Without him, Apple demoed prototypes more, talked about plans and fields they worked on more and tried to pumped up confidence by giving out information more. It's been like this for a few years. Not a short time in the tech world.
They did regroup and formed a new foundation that is quite strong. Positioning at product and service for privacy alone has no competitors in the near future. And they have everything needed to make customers believe in them (on the other hand, do customers really have other quality and trustworthy alternatives?).
The best product after Jobs from Apple, to me, is AirPods. That's the only product makes me amazed and satisfied.
I'm actually a big fan of Apple's approach on making product and an iOS developer myself.