I don't mean to argue a black to the Jobs fans' white; as long as the discussion is nuanced, I am perfectly satisfied. Just compare the org chart of Apple to that of Microsoft to see how much they differ.
Cook's job is still hugely significant, but it's too Hacker News-like to reduce everything to a catchy one-liner or word meant to suggest that Apple is in dire straits, when it's more complicated than that.
Don't disagree at all. There is a proverb says that "The constraints of the horn determine its music." This is true for company organizations as well, how a company is organized determines what it can and cannot do. When we moved to the SF Bay Area my wife worked for Xerox and saw that every day. At Sun Microsystems, when the 'portable' launched, we joked "You can make any kind of computer you want as long as its a workstation!"
Cook's job is still hugely significant, but it's too Hacker News-like to reduce everything to a catchy one-liner or word meant to suggest that Apple is in dire straits, when it's more complicated than that.