At Hypercritical, John Siracusa, in his inimitable style, criticizes Apple for its shift of focus from making great products to making tremendous amounts of money:

As far as I’m concerned, the only truly mortal sin for Apple’s leadership is losing sight of the proper relationship between product virtue and financial success—and not just momentarily, but constitutionally, intransigently, for years. Sadly, I believe this has happened.

The preponderance of the evidence is undeniable. Too many times, in too many ways, over too many years, Apple has made decisions that do not make its products better, all in service of control, leverage, protection, profits—all in service of money.

He calls for “new leadership at Apple,” by which he presumably means replacing CEO Tim Cook, but he may well be seeking to oust all of Apple’s current leadership team, most of whom have served with—and advised—Cook his entire tenure as CEO. It’s hard to imagine any of them making meaningfully different decisions. And any change at the top will come from within: today’s Apple is institutionally averse to bringing in an external CEO, so someone on that leadership page is Apple’s next CEO.

I’m not against leadership change; I just don’t think it addresses the issue, which is that making incredible amounts of money is a difficult thing to give up willingly, especially when you’re beholden to Wall Street. I often wonder if Apple would make different—and better—decisions if it were a private company.