I have yet to read ANY review of this book that doesn't describe it as (summarizing) a hatchet job where the author started with a pre-conceived notion (Apple is doomed without Steve) and then proceeded to cherry-pick or discard facts as needed to fit that notion. That is neither good journalism nor acceptable non-fiction book writing, so I see no reason to reward the author for sloppy and unprofessional work.
The fact of the matter is that Apple stock is up nearly 40 percent from when Steve resigned. Sales are up. Profits are up. There is no product other than the iPod that Apple makes that isn't selling better now than it did in 2011. But much more important than the financial side, most of these products are significantly BETTER than the products of 2011. The iPhone. The iPad. The iMac. The MacBook line. The Apple TV. Much of the underlying technologies (processor, battery, Lightning, etc).
Naysayers argue that Apple hasn't had a revolutionary product since the iPad. I'd argue the point with the Mac Pro, but for the sake of debate let's say they're right. So?
Revolutions don't happen on a schedule. Only hype and smoke+mirror type "innovations" can be routinely scheduled. The expectations are in part Apple's own fault, I suppose, but that doesn't make it any less a double-standard. People forget it was *six years* between the iPod and the iPhone, and Apple wasn't hurting *at all* in between those two inventions. Most of the big names in tech and other industries have *maybe* two genuinely innovative products or services to their name, and a fair few companies only have those because they bought them off someone else. And these are companies that have been around longer than Apple, in some cases decades longer.
Apple isn't (and never has been) an "disruption factory." Its a customer-experience laboratory, and some of the experiments are very successful, some are brilliant but not successful, and some just don't work.
I'm not going to worry about Apple until I see some evidence that they've stopped caring about the customer experience and that they've given up on "giving a ****" (to quote Ive) on design and experimentation and taking chances. Only at THAT point can we say that Steve's Apple is truly gone, IMO.
