Apple is an example of a product driven company. A really well marketed CreativeRiver is not an iPod, a really well marketed Motorola Razr is not an iPhone and I wouldn't substitute any Galaxy Tab device for an iPad.
Also, since Tim Cook (who is no ones idea of a marketing genius) took charge, Apple's stock price has more than doubled.
https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...
But so far, the products Apple has launched under his leadership haven't actually been all that well conceived.
V1 of the Apple Watch was a confusing mess that didn't have a real, concrete purpose or place in anyone's lives.
With v2, they stepped back and focused a bit (on the active/athletic market), but it's hardly a breakthrough device yet.
Meanwhile, the iPad is (so far) falling far short of its potential to revolutionize computing.
All of this could change. But for me, despite the stock price, the jury on the Era of Cook is still out.
The iPad takes a beating - somewhat unjustly - for failing to live up to the promises made of it by its marketing. Judged against almost any other product other than the iPhone, it's an enormous success. It created an entire product category, it sold more devices on its opening year than all previous sales of tablet sales combined. It captured an enterprise market that almost everyone said Apple would never be able to touch. It changed the behavior of the competition - BlackBerry, Google and Microsoft all rushed devices to market and Windows 8 was of course heavily inspired by the need to run well on touch devices.
A lot of the Surface book and ultrabook adverts have focused on more creative and sexy applications. I haven't seen one for a while that says 'Runs Powerpoint like a motherf*cker'
His keynote speeches "One More Thing..." were the pure essence of great showmanship.
An amazingly designed and engineered product, marketed brilliantly is the platonic idea. To be "insanely great," you usually need both.