For as conceptually consistent a company as Apple wants us to believe it is, it sure can fall into turmoil sometimes.  And apparently that turmoil started when Steve Jobs left and Apple hasn’t recovered until now.
If you’re a Stiff and don’t believe that Apple sank into sludge, just look at how little purpose went into iOS 7-9.  And now look at iOS 10.  See the difference?  iOS 10 looks more complete then iOS 7-9 (and when a version of iOS looks more complete than 3 other versions that looked basically the same, you got a problem).
If you’re the other type of Stiff and don’t believe Apple has recovered, check out this post by Above Avalon.  The post details Apple’s perceived product model, and says that Apple now looks to be creating something called the Apple Experience—
Wait what?  Wasn’t it already aiming for that?  Wasn’t the point of Apple products to adapt to the user?  Looking at the product layout images on the article, we see some familiar models:  The Mac as the center, then each product supporting the other equally in a stool formation, then the phone as the center…
But then there’s this really odd self-adapting formation, where as the user places more or less importance on a particular product, the supports to other products get stronger or weaker.
…But shouldn’t Apple have been aiming for that anyway?  A product model that adapts to the user sounds like a very Apple way of dealing with things…
Um, well…Apple didn’t do it before.  So there was no experience.  “Experience” in quotes.  As in, in business terms, you couldn’t call it an “experience”…oh forget it.  They’re making an experience now.  They’re “Apple” now.  Before, they were “That company that looks like Apple but only had one guy running things that everyone believed was Apple and thought he was making an experience but now we know that he wasn’t”.  And then during iOS 7-9 (and maybe 6), they were “That company that looks like Apple but was actually a manifestation of the confusion between ‘UX/UI Simplicity’ and ‘Visual Simplicity’.
At least that’s what the article implies to me.  If you want to tag it as “Apple was doing Apple by waiting and doing the necessary evil of pissing everyone off and ruining the world”, be my guest.
In fact here’s several reactions to this article (with no particular theme):
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-Steve Jobs was an idiot and wasn’t actually designing an experience?!
-Why would you do any other formation other than the self-adapting one?  That’s the most Apple!
-So Apple DID suck, but now we’re all safe!
-Apple still sucks because they don’t know what they’re doing!!
-The Apple Watch or iWatch or Watch or whatever can’t fit into the self-adapting one because it’s slow as hell and I haven’t seen watchOS 3 yet!
-WINDOWS/ANDROID/UBUNTU/LINUX/XIAO MI/ANYTHING-ELSE IS BETTER APPLE SUCKS.
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Pick your favorite.
But what I personally think, based on what Above Avalon said, is that we’re getting stock Apple now (no “stock Android” reference intended).  Because stock Apple obviously didn’t exist when Steve was alive.  Or at any other point other than now.
Or maybe this was just Apple Inc. and the cult is an illusion and anything Apple does is just your average company behavior. Â Yeah, say that to an Apple fan and see how far you get.
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Before I end this post, I want to make a note:  There’s been some confusion over whether Apple is a functionally divided company or not.  I still find references to “Apple’s functionally divided system”, but everyone I talk to gives good reasons as to why Apple can’t be functionally divided, and I wonder.  But this “self-adapting product model” seems to require the mindset of “Every product needs to do everything so the user can have any of our products and still be able to use them as if they had any other combination of products”, which implies a functionally divided company so every product receives the same level of care as any other.  The reason why the products appear lopsided right now is because they appear to have just figured this out.  My diagnosis of the interval between when Steve died and now, is that after he died, Apple fell into a fight between Jony (who was appointed iOS software design lead), and everyone else.  The fight then devolved into confusion as people temporarily lost sight of what Apple was aiming for.  This lasted through iOS 8 and 9.  And now, they finally got their feet back under them and are coming back with iOS 10.
That’s my theory.