SVP of “No”

Apple, by any measure, is one of the largest companies in the world. With that comes incredible profit and thus almost limitless resources. Why then, does Apple churn out mediocre updates to some products, ignore others, release bug-plagued, unfinished software, and find itself pivoting on priorities as it gets caught flat-footed?

From the outside looking in, it's impossible to know. However, if we allow ourselves to play doctor and to make a diagnosis based on symptoms, I see no other conclusion possible but a failure of leadership.

Ignoring the current political minefield it finds itself in and also ignoring the specific people -who's responsible for what-, I find the following problems evident:

Lack of Cohesive Strategic Direction

Apple seems extremely reactive the past few years.

They entirely missed AI trends despite having an advantage with machine learning just a few years ago. The miss on Apple Intelligence will be a less taught in business school. It was so bad that Apple burned the name Apple Intelligence and they burned the new Siri UI that debuted in iOS 18. If they ever crack this nut, they should probably rebrand it entirely, including "Siri". There's too much negativity associated with Siri's performance already- start over.

Apple worked on Vision Pro for many years. This is rumored to be an area of great interest to Tim Cook. But they missed smart glasses. They might get caught up, but they'll be entering from a place of weakness. Their prolific ecosystem affords them an opportunity to get caught up, and perhaps take the lead, but they should have been leaders to begin with.

They were caught watching these trends go by. They reacted way too late to two technologies that were very predictable.

No One Says "No, that's not good enough"

Apple's hardware is the best it's ever been. Their M-series chips are the best in the world and they continue to get better. Software though...

MacOS 26, iPadOS 26, and iOS 26 are bad. As I noted in the past, I don't care for Liquid Glass. But style aside, these are among the most bug-riddled releases in years. They weren't ready to ship, but no one said "no".

In July, they announced AppleCare One as "a new way for customers to cover multiple Apple products with one simple plan, with the option to add more at any time for $5.99 per month for each device". That's a great idea. I'd much rather pay one fee for AppleCare and a bunch of small ones, and if it saves me money, all the better. But it wasn't ready, it wasn't thought through, and it was also full of bugs. No one said "no".

Ads were a misstep for Apple. They opened the floodgate to spam their own users with service offerings. It's embarrassing and beneath the premium design and premium price of Apple's products. If you need to drive up services revenue, make better services.

Apple used to embrace the old adage "first be best, then be first". Now they're the perfect meme of "we'll fix it in post." Apple needs a new role: Sr. Vice President of No.

Inability to Read the Room

Apple has been forced by various governments to open iPhones to non-Apple app stores. This has been codified in law in an increasing number of places where Apple sells products. But for reasons that have long since defied logic, they choose to continue to die on this hill. In some cases, they've done so despite specific court orders. It's embarrassing. Their hand has been forced. They should embrace the inevitability and role this out worldwide. This would allow them a bit more leeway to set their own terms and would offer them a political relief valve when governments require (or ask nicely with the full weight of business-crippling tariffs behind them) to remove certain apps from the App Store.

Apple continues to treat developers as a necessary evil instead of the backbone to the software ecosystem that makes any Apple hardware worth purchasing. APIs are as buggy as customer-facing features. Documentation doesn't exist, and if it does, it's generally poor. WWDC should be an incredible opportunity to reinvigorate developers, but instead, after many years of the same disappointments, it's become a calendar date for developers to prepare to implement new features that may or may not work.

CarPlay is another example of Apple just completely and utterly missing what the key stakeholders need and want in a system. CarPlay Ultra— how's that going? Lack of CarPlay support used to be a deal breaker for me. But now most automakers have perfectly fine built-in navigation, and audio can be handled through Bluetooth. I still use CarPlay every day, but I'm not even sure I'd miss it if it were gone. Sure, I prefer Apple's style to that of my car manufacturers, but it's no longer the gap it once was.

Apple posted a video on its YouTube account titled "Design it how it works". It opens with the famous Steve Jobs' quote: "Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works." The video goes on to demonstrate some of Apple's truly incredible design work. But I can't imagine it's long before someone makes a parody video full of illegible UI, a turtled Magic Mouse, or the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery sideways on a non-iPhone Air.

The Leadership

All of these are the result of leadership failures at the highest levels. Even if the problems originate at lower levels, it's the senior leadership that is accountable for the results. This doesn't say anything about their ability to lead, but rather is a statement on the lack of results.

Apple became an unprecedented logistics and manufacturing powerhouse under Tim Cook's direction. There are very few people in the world who could have done so as successfully as he did. Tim, of course, couldn't have done it without an equally passionate and strong-performing team under him. This team has grown throughout the years, and rumors are it will continue to change in the future.

The old guard is nearing retirement, so the change is inevitable. Whomever the personnel are that make up that change, one hopes they take stock of the current situation Apple is in. To be successful, this calls for an objective, introspective SWOT analysis and an appetite for change.

What's NeXT?

Slow down and remove artificial constraints. It's long since time to move away from artificially forced yearly OS updates. Ship it when it's really ready, not when the calendar hits its date. And for the love of all things holy, ship a major bug-fix-only release. It would be really slick if features weren't shown off until they were ready to ship. This may even give time for proper developer documentation.

It may be necessary to continue a yearly iPhone upgrade (though I would challenge that). But there is no reason why that necessitates a major OS update. What's really next in operating systems? UI redesigns so it looks new and pasted-on AI ain't it.

Do more of what you're good at: good industrial design and embrace the "it just works" mentality of yesterday. There are huge opportunities in home automation for normal people (not just nerds). There are huge opportunities in automotive that aren't just full-display takeover or entire vehicles. Sony has that weird partnership with Honda. If there are some innovative ideas that died with Project Titan, maybe there's hope yet.

Home robots. I'm sorry if you, dear reader, are not ready, but they're coming, and they have huge potential. The ELEGNT (Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot) machine learning white paper and video Apple released at the beginning of 2025 demonstrate that they're rather far along in this area. It's not Boston Dynamics, but it has tremendous potential.

Apple still has incredible talent and opportunity. The future is as bright for them as it ever has been. But recent mis-queues, which are of increasing frequency, need to be resolved, and I'm afraid a leadership shakeup is probably needed

Software and ecosystem integration at Apple... it should be better.