"It's telling that after Jobs, Apple didn't slide into irrelevance but instead continued to thrive."

Tim Cook is clearly incredibly important to the success of Apple, but from a product perspective it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company. Those products are faster and slicker and have better cameras -- the innovations afforded to a hyper-profitable company -- but it isn't like Apple has done a 90 degree turn or anything. They aren't a smartphone/pad/computer company that turned into a smartcar/massage chair company.

Apple Watch and AirPods both launched after the Jobs era, and they're doing pretty well in their respective categories. I wouldn't bet against Apple on their product strategy with Cook running things, they're a lot doing more than just adding polish to what Jobs left them with.

> it is a refinement of all the products Steve Jobs launched that still carry the company

Not really. You could say that the iPhone still carries the company, but with the exception of that outlier newer initiatives like Services and Wearables/Home/Accessories bring in way more money than products that Steve Jobs launched (Mac and iPad).

Not really? Then you casually say "if you exclude the iPhone" which kind of undercuts the entire argument, doesn't it?

70% of Apple revenue comes from the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Services revenue is entirely and absolutely based upon that, and certainly didn't originate post Jobs.

Even the Watch -- have one and love it -- exists on the back of the iPhone.

So, yeah, really.

Everything Apple has done that has been successful since Jobs is entirely in the halo of the iPhone, which of course still accounts for the vast bulk of Apple's profits.

How much of that is staying power because of the ecosystem and just enough incremental improvements to keep consumers happy? I agree that Tim Cook made all of the logistics work to turn the dream into reality but now that Jobs is gone it just feels like the dream stopped evolving and lots of blemishes and complexity are slipping into the operating systems that Jobs wouldn't have allowed.

Blackberry also had tons of brand loyalty as did Nokia, Motorola. I don't know that, ecosystem, and incremental improvements are enough to keep going with how competitive the space is, or they'd be eaten alive by samsung, Microsoft, etc that are also slowly but surely building those same things. And the apple watch is a huge success - and sure, year to hear iPhones are iterative, but look back a few years and it's amazing how far tech has come

I wondered that, but they've made at least a couple of good product decisions in the post-jobs era. Most notably in my mind: the AirPods, and the iPad Pro (with pencil, and more powerful iOS).