They're revolutionized 3 industries (consumer PC, portable music player, mobile PC) and whiffed on several others that went to similar competitors (business PC,

They're revolutionized 3 industries (consumer PC, portable music player, mobile PC) and whiffed on several others that went to similar competitors (business PC, servers, "cloud" SaaS). In every case there's two things in common: a consumer electronics market, and they had by far the best product when the market was first being established (Apple IIe, iPod, iPhone). In every case they made an absolute killing at first only to eventually level off and get passed by competitors once it becomes commoditized. I attribute this to a very top-down design approach that only worked due to a visionary leader. Steve Jobs was able to predict what consumers would want before it was even remotely feasible, and would demand it from his engineers so that Apple could win the market while it was still in its infancy. A more bottom-up approach a la Microsoft or Google is more successful at the long game, because it's more efficient at spending its resources (i.e. focusing on the software and outsourcing the hardware on Android). In that time Jobs already had Apple cranking away on the Next Big Thing. Hit on one market every decade or two and you have a successful company. Hit on two in a row and you have the GDP of a small country. In a post-Jobs Apple however, they're going to have to bet on either still having that same predictive power, or changing strategies to be more bottom-up. My bet is on the latter since a) Jobs was a generational business talent b) they now have an established premium brand and c) basically infinite money to spend on talent/resources. All that combines to a very successful foundation for a company, but don't bet on them having the same playbook as the last 30 years.