Part of the problem is Apple’s over reliance on super hero engineers — both hardware and software. Sure, they’re some of the best engineers in the business, bu

Part of the problem is Apple’s over reliance on super hero engineers — both hardware and software. Sure, they’re some of the best engineers in the business, but you can’t keep taking all the best super hero engineers off whatever projects they’re working on now and keep moving them around to whatever project is in most dire need of saving that can only be done by super heroes. And you can’t just wave a magic wand and instantly create more unicorn super heroes. Instead, you have to build a culture where success comes from the good efforts of good-enough engineers that may not be quite super hero level — and then find or make more of those good-enough engineers that you can keep the business sustainable. This is very much like the problem of being in constant fire-fighting mode and trying to keep individually battling the alligators, and not being able to focus on draining the swamp instead.