That's one big change to the Apple business model. The other is structural. In the early days, Jobs laid a lot of emphasis on making his goods in the US. That's barely the case now: Apple has morphed into a design and retail business that orders in its manufactures from a network of more than 150 companies, usually based abroad. That makes it a more profitable enterprise but it also means that Apple is effectively outsourcing its thinking about production and components to others. In 1999, a pair of organisational academics noted that there was something curious about Jobs's employees: "People were recruited to Apple with the idea that they would be helping to change the world. Apple was more than a company; it was a cause." But what happens to a cause when most of its parts and its software come in from a variety of points scattered far, far away from the Cupertino HQ?
None of these changes happened overnight in the summer of 2011. It was under Jobs that Cook came to prominence. What seems to be happening to Apple now is a culmination of trends that have been in play for years, and which are no longer being offset.
But one thing Steve Jobs wouldn't have done is what his successor did this spring: cave into pressure from hedge funds and give the company a $100bn cashpile. When a tech firm starts buying back shares from investors, it's as good an indication as any that it's run out of ideas and oomph. William Lazonick at the University of Massachusetts Lowell says that Apple is no longer a design and product firm, driven by engineers and designers, but a "financialised" company focused on returning money to Wall Street. It is, he and a team of academics conclude, "becoming a typical American corporation". That's a damning verdict for the company that Jobs built. But it's also worrying in its implications for modern, financial capitalism to deliver innovation.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/16/iphone5s-apple-given-up-innovation
