(Or at least it would have leaked much easier through the grapevine)
The Watch is incredibly popular, AirPods are a runaway hit, the iPad Pro is killing it, the new Mac Pro is awesome, Apple Music took off, Apple Pay/Card is super popular....
I genuinely don't know why you say they haven't done anything.
If anything it's incredible that the company manages to stay true to itself time and time again. That's a testament to the strength of the culture Steve left behind.
What are you basing this on? Seems to me that Apple leadership is pretty well aligned on a shared vision despite however large it's grown. That speaks to the fact that he managed to put (or at least didn't prevent) a successful leadership structure in place that continues to succeed regardless of his presence. It's a supremely difficult challenge & aligns with a lot of the insights that David Marquet makes in Turn This Ship Around. Regardless of any of the detail differences, the only way to measure successful leadership is it's resilience to changing out individuals in any given position.
I never said he was a good communicator of vision. That said, just because Jobs failed to steer Apple from the grave isn’t evidence of failure on his part. The value of a person like Steve can’t be distilled into reproducible learnings—his value was in his ability to make real time decisions in service of a clear unified vision.
Even if you could find some replacement person who shared his vision, that doesn’t mean you can get everyone to cede to their proclamations like they would have with Steve.
That’s only because Elon’s particular house style lends to such vacuous motherhood statements. I have no problem with vacuous motherhood statements, but please recognise that they are fan service, not company vision.
Elon’s style is great for growing a niche fan base. Steve perfected the art of turning niche fan base into mass market appeal.
The evidence I would put forth is that, in the decade since Steve Jobs died, Apple has added a watch to their lineup, and changed virtually nothing else. Their supply chain efficiencies might be better, but without Steve to look at what the rest of the world was offering, and to say, "That is all shit, THIS is what should be next", Apple has merely been a high-end manufacturer of electronics.
Elon, on the other hand, has a very clear vision, and it can be communicated in simple statements: "Humanity needs to be a multiplanetary species". "Electric vehicles are the only viable, sustainable means of mass short range travel".
When you combine this with the drive he has to succeed, you get people lined up behind him, not because they want to emulate him, but because their goals are aligned. The people who work at SpaceX want humanity to go to Mars - not because Elon says so, but because they know it has to happen for us to survive, and because Elon's company is the best hope we have right now.