That's two people out of an entire industry though, not a great sample size. And it could be argued that for all his marketing expertise and long drawn out paus

That's two people out of an entire industry though, not a great sample size. And it could be argued that for all his marketing expertise and long drawn out pauses, Steve really just had a brilliant set of products to sell. My experience has been that marketing in a 'normal' organisation is that they expend a lot of time and effort trying to sell a product that's just not that good or innovative. I think that's where the whole 'lipstick on a pig' analogy comes into play, and also where people's inherent distrust for anyone in marketing/advertising stems from.