> Ever since Jobs came back (and Apple became valuable again) it has also become very much top-down with the engineers, for better or worse, not calling the shots. Just an obvious example — there are of course no engineers in the decision to make a "Snow Leopard" release or not.

It's unclear how much explanatory value this has, because the Snow Leopard that everyone is pining for was during the Jobs era. After all, an Apple that goes bankrupt and out of business isn't going to make any software updates.

I find a stark difference between the Jobs era and the Cook era. Under Jobs, the early Mac OS X updates (Puma and Jaguar) came fast and furious, but then the schedule slowed considerably. Panther was 14 months, Tiger 18, Leopard 30 (delayed due to iPhone), Snow Leopard 22 months, Lion 23. Mountain Lion was the first release after the death of Jobs and came only 12 months after Lion. Thereafter, every Mac OS update came yearly, give or take a few months. That's a drastic change in release schedule.