Apple historically has concentrated leadership to a T (see: the Steve Jobs mythos) I don't recall hearing anything about Intel being nearly as centralized.

Steve Jobs apparently demolished internal units, with the following outcome:

> As was the case with Jobs before him, CEO Tim Cook occupies the only position on the organizational chart where the design, engineering, operations, marketing, and retail of any of Apple’s main products meet. In effect, besides the CEO, the company operates with no conventional general managers: people who control an entire process from product development through sales and are judged according to a P&L statement.

https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...

Apple is very differently organised from most big corporations, it has whats known as a functional organisational structure. Marketing, operations, software engineering, hardware engineering, etc.

Most corporations are organised around product groups, but what happens when the mobile products group comes up with a new device and wants to sell it to corporate clients? The enterprise products division might not like that. Imagine if Apple had a Mac division selling laptops, they might not have been happy about the Phone division coming out with the iPad and keyboard cases.

To be fair, I think many of their Mac-related problems over the past few years are a result of no one being able to defend the line internally, too. Management is a difficult problem.

I think this is a misunderstanding. The problems with the Mac have not been due to neglect, but due to very aggressive forward looking and innovative advancements of the platform some of which just failed.

You don’t develop all new low profile keyboard technology, an original touch sensitive display interface system, a new hinge mechanism, a custom integrated security and image processing chip (T2), and a unique 5k display system through neglect. The problem is some of these advancements were simply misconceived. It wasn’t lack of interest or investment, it was poor execution of some of the new developments.

Steve Jobs used to say that being better necessarily meant being different, but being different means taking risks and sometimes they don’t pay off.

Apple bought fell for the whole "Post-PC" mirage when the iPhone & iPad were on a tear: the desktop Mac was definitely neglected for years with no advancements while manpower was directed at iOS & iOS devices. What they did come up with, was the form-over-function trashcan Mac "Pro" with severe thermal limitations. They only got it right on their next attempt (some 2+ years later), after being publicly called out for neglecting their pro customers (Final Cut Pro X and the trashcan Mac were the final straw for a lot of video professionals who switched to Windows).

For a while, the software quality of new OS releases was night and day, comparing iOS and OS X. It was clear where the focus was. Apple's org structure has it's weaknesses.

The largest issue with the trashcan MacPro6,1 was complete lack of GPU performance. They weren’t even VR capable.

The biggest problem is the form-over-function design. The same applies to the new one as well, though it's not as bad. In both cases, they are missing out on the business market who need a workhorse. Both are priced out of most people's budgets. We end up buying Mac Minis and struggling with their limited capabilities and expansion options. Their whole strategy here is poor. They don't have any midrange options between the two extremes.

Perhaps we just have a different opinion, and that's OK. I don't work at Apple, so I have no deeper insight, other than to me, it looks like the Mac branch has been flailing with no clear direction for some time now. They may have the money to try things, but there no one steering the ship, so to speak.

I'm sure they have it, but it occurs to me that they did go through a near-death experience that might have caused some of the worst baggage to abandon ship, and for a while afterwards they probably knew that it was possible for even a company as big as Apple to go under.

Now that it's been a while, it wouldn't totally shock me if they ended up drifting Intel's way eventually.

Explained somewhat by the nature of the innovators dilemma and the products they're making: - x86 chips for PC were Intel's cash cow so doing anything to disrupt that revenue stream would be fought against - Apple's cash cow is the phone itself so they don't particularly have any dogmatic loyalty to one type of chip as long as the phone sells

Now if there were a technology to come up agains the iPhone (glasses anyone?) they'd probably face the same conundrum; disrupt themselves or be disrupted?

They did, famously, deliberately kill their own iPod market by introducing the iPhone.

That was completely conventional and expected per the innovators dilemma - they moved to a higher margin product with more features. iPhone was innovative and impressive for many reasons but it did not short circuit innovators dilemma.

Very true good point

Apple probably has similar problems, but this particular sub-organization is healthy for now.

Maybe because it's newer and hasn't rotted yet.

While Steve Jobs was alive, he served as Apple's lodestone and BDFL. It's only been 9 years since his passing, so any rot that might exist probably wouldn't have grown enough (taking into account their culture of secrecy as well) to be externally visible.