This guy made a guess and also picked a title likely to engender some debate or get page views. Good for him I guess as he took a stand. Unfortunately, he was totally off the mark.
All this proves is the best strategies and ideas are usually written after the fact. Once something works, it gets celebrated, becomes a best practice, becomes a subject of books, and companies with no interest in creativity assume they can copy them and succeed.
No doubt. They've done remarkably well but this (1) hasn't always been the case with Apple and (2) they do benefit from a brand halo they have from the iPod which did change the game.
It'll be interesting to see if they can extend their wins into a new realm like with their social network - ping. That would be a testament to the firm's brilliance.
I think they did extend their wins into a new realm with the iPhone and the iPad. A lot of analysts doomed their effort because nobody had managed to enter the cell phone market with no previous experience.
I don't think Ping is a major product for them, I'm pretty sure that it's more a feature like Genius playlists or iTunes LP. I might be wrong here, but I don't get the feeling that they're trying to enter social networking as a realm. Just like MobileMe still hasn't been Apples big entry into cloud computing, it's just a nice add-on feature.
I think (1) is always the case with a "brilliant" company (whatever that means).
Apple got successes because they didn't shun risk. Often they got it right (e.g. the iMac, dropping the floppy, etc...). Others they got it wrong (e.g. the Mac cube, and their adding DVD players instead of CD-RW back when you couldn't have both easily).
But if you don't risk you get nowhere. Sony used to take risks... sadly not so much now (apart from the play station, but they got so burnt with the PS3 that I doubt they'll try again). I miss more gutsy companies.
All this proves is the best strategies and ideas are usually written after the fact. Once something works, it gets celebrated, becomes a best practice, becomes a subject of books, and companies with no interest in creativity assume they can copy them and succeed.