The story goes, according to my boss with her signed letter of appreciation for her 20 year service to the company, that when Steve came back to Apple the first

The story goes, according to my boss with her signed letter of appreciation for her 20 year service to the company, that when Steve came back to Apple the first thing he did was cut the research team. The rationale being that Apple is not in a position to do the R in R&D and instead will focus just on the D to survive. In turn he starts slashing the D that won't yield results, while focusing on the ones that will. And being that he was now single handled in charge the most he can focus on is being in the center of four quadrants, hence putting everything on the table into just four buckets: 1. Consumer 2. Professionals 3. Hardware 4. Software 1 being the thing that Steve gets. 2 being the thing that Steve wants. 3 being what Apple does best and 4 being what adds value. Now everything Apple does runs off this premise. The premise worked well enough to pump out the iBook, iMac, iPhone, to then the MacBook and MacBook Pro, to the Mac Pro, Mac mini. Then he died. In his place he passed the legacy to an operator. Because the operator's goal is two folds: keep improving things and keep making things efficient. Tim Cook delivered on the latter and he's working on the former. The clones being the ones that can take the baton and run with it. It'll be here soon enough. The next generation is starting to take shape. And there will be leaders that take the stage to lead each quadrant. PS: Square aped this strategy, that's why Jack Corsey was a favorite of Steve's. Square sells you the hardware at cost and gives the software away free, they scale by latching on to the hack of reselling you points on a merchant account.