Apple products have declined in quality and User Experience

Apple ecosystem key to company remaining world's most valuable brands, says Interbrand

Apple's ecosystem is the most convoluted it has ever been since Steve Jobs died, and it keeps getting worse. More decisions are short-sighted, made with the bottom line in mind, and the value of each new iteration of hardware and software is sharply declining.

The latest innovation for Macbooks? A touchbar that has been widely panned as functionally useless, which doesn't even sync to the color temperature of the monitor. Features like Apple Music and Dark Mode are half-assed at best, and broken at worst. The little things, like having dynamic parallax wallpapers on the iPhone, were minimally implemented at launch and then totally ignored. The UI on iOS has gotten substantially uglier and more confusing to use. Above all else, Apple can no longer say of their products that "it just works."

I believe this is a direct result of two leadership decisions:

• Having a supply chain expert run what is widely considered a design company;
• Considering Apple a design company, and giving Jony Ive way too much latitude to prioritize form over function.

Attention to detail and quality control are at an all-time low. Their products all but require the use of dongles or expensive wireless peripherals. (No headphone jack, etc.). Their most powerful computer is a small cylinder that cannot be substantially expanded because it looks cool.

Apple needs to start erring on the side of function, not form, if it wants to maintain its advantage.