I miss the old Pixar. Yes, now Disney is making better animated films, but I'm not sure it's worth the loss of truly great Pixar films. Plus, it seems that Disney is slipping too. Though they released some good films after the acquisition of Pixar (Tangled was excellent), their recent releases have been... mediocre. I never liked Cars, Finding Dory could've been better... I suppose Moana was pretty good, but the exception to the new rule. Now to see good, emotionally resonant films, we look to other studios. Kubo was astounding good, for example. Props to Lassiter for his success, but it comes at the cost of great films for the whole family.
Intentional talent drain. A tiny bit of anecdotal information from a talk given by a couple of Pixar artists was that if you were an artist, you could get paid 30% more in Southern California than at Pixar in Emeryville. Also talked to an engineer who left Pixar for Google. I think Bob Iger doesn't want an independent and powerful Pixar.
What's in Southern California?
Disney Animation is based out of Burbank. I think the writing was on the wall when John Lasseter took over as head of basically all of Disney's animation groups which includes Pixar.
Yeah, there's no real story here, is there? Pixar is now a Disney brand, charged with keeping its existing properties chugging along happily. Meanwhile, the original Pixar team has spread out and created stuff like Tomorrowland (far from perfect, but way more interesting than the average movie) and Frozen (which it's fashionable to hate on but is actually as good as its receipts). Wreck It Ralph and Zootopia _are_ Pixar movies, they just don't have the brand.
Frankly neither Pixar, nor Disney's animated films come anywhere close to Studio Ghibli's artistry in story-telling. The tech is definitely cool though.
My suspicion is that Disney wanted Pixar's secret formula, but under its own brand. So they stole it, and fabricated a story about how the two studios work in parallel, and don't share ideas with each other.
I know Jobs was pretty hands off with Pixar, but the fall of their creative height started when Steve moved on. I was surprised the article made no mention of this.