Glassnost
The two biggest issues facing Apple right now:
A software operation in shambles. The macOS desktop has forgotten what it is, cosplaying as a mismash of borrowed attributes from other OSes, that look the way they do because they serve different form factors and different needs. And software quality has gone down the tubes.
Borderline open warfare between its own desire for control (and possibly money, through the proxy of "maintained margins") and the needs of its developers.
I recently read Steve Jobs in Exile, a book that finally focuses on the full lost years of NeXT as more than a fast-forwarded bridge between two periods of greatness. Although it is devastatingly cloying in some aspects (it highlights the invention of the Blue Box that became Classic and AppKit as the sole future framework as a stroke of genius, rather than as a costly diversion that almost cost Apple its future before Carbon was invented), it does tell the unvarnished story.
Combined with recent reporting on Apple turning 50, I'm seeing support for ideas that I have agreed with for a long time but didn't know to be the case: that an Apple or a NeXT fueled only with the Steve Jobs ideals of unopenable, unextendable, we-know-what's-best boxes would not have taken over the world.
Instead, they stand as a monolith, commemorating the value of taking a contrary position, of starting fresh, of rejecting dogma. Companies that fail in doing this will be overtaken by companies that are less encumbered. But merely adhering to going back, as it is now so popularly called, to first principles, is not enough.
Apple is an idea - a to-and-fro. The Mac community lives resplendent in the values its users cultivate; the apps are shaped not by aping Apple, but by people who commiserate with a culturally compatible platform.
Steve Jobs and NeXT insisted on high production value hardware that did not bring it closer to the goal of serving its intended customer and in many cases actively repelled it. The difference with today's Apple is not a lack of unquenchable arrogance — it's that Apple has enough runway and resources that it is not seen as openly reckless.
Whereas NeXT was full of engineers and marketers seeing sense and fighting Steve on his muddied properties, the rot goes deeper down the stem in today's Apple. But apples can be inoculated and grafted onto fresh branches, to once again produce sweet fruit.
After letting Tim cook for 15 years, it's time to begin a new transition, and hand off the care of the garden to a new John Appleseed. I'm hoping for a new start, with plenty of new shoots, new cultivars and a lot less glass to have to pick out of the harvest this fall.