I don't know what they meant, but I think the case is reasonably easy, if the accusation is "financial engineering." Apple's overall range of products have shrunk over the years. I'm old enough to remember when they had 20 different kinds of desktop computers, updated every year. They now have 1 desktop, updated every few years, one laptop, updated every few years.

There is a sense they've given up on everything but the iPhone. Arguably, Apple keeps producing Mac computers only because iPhone devs need to run XCode somewhere.

The iPhone was introduced in 2007. It was very innovative at the time, though now it has dozens of Android clones. Total sales of iPhones seems to have peaked -- increases in Apple's profits have come from raising prices and managing margins.

This last bit would be the heart of the case that Apple is now increasingly financial in nature and therefore parasitic. They don't seem to be rolling out much in the way of new products, and certainly nothing as "change the world" as the iPhone was in 2007.

I think it is well known that Apple does not have the "division per product group" structure that almost all other large companies have. But Apple has an unusually narrow range of products for such a large company.

Even projects that Apple seemed excited about 6 or 7 years ago, such as home entertainment, no longer seems to be priority for them. I can tell you from personal experience, their Apple TV has been absolutely stagnant for years, and many of the problems, which I assumed they would eventually fix, have not been fixed.