Apple has always made some good products, but their problem has always been the narcisstic persona of Steve Jobs. He really got in the way. Jobs didn't want Apple to be a great company. He wanted it to be a cult; a cult about him.
Isn't Jobs the same guy who was removed from Apple at one time?
Isn't he the guy who fathered a child and swore in depositions that it/she couldn't be his because he was sterile, and then fathered children with another wife?
Isn't he the inventor of the "Lisa" desktop, which he named after one of his favorite girlfriends.
One doesn't have to know his real history to see that he'd be better cast as a meglomaniac Roman Emperor than a corporate CEO.
Anyone who's seen his grandeous, exalted stage performances at the launching of Apple products knows the answer to that. What many didn't know was why - that he was an unwanted child who grew up alienated and broke and craved attention and acceptance. Every product they introduced was, in his own mind, as much about him as it was about the product or its users.
He was a legend in his own mind.
When Gates departs from the scene I will welcome it as much also. No one has to be an A-hole to build a company. What's particularly pernicious about these guys is that they pose themselves as the "anti-establishment techie leaders" who don't believe in doing evil. Their hypocracy is emblematic of everything to do with high tech - it's not as revolutionary as it's promoters claim. It's merely doing the same jobs and meeting the same needs in a slightly different way.
These people are not iconoclasts.
They are promoters and showmen.