[redthrowaway]

I was struck, reading this, of the analogous situation at Boeing: a company founded on engineering talent and propelled to stardom by a string of successful moonshots, merges with McDonnell Douglas, a government contractor par excellence. At first, it seems synergistic: the dynamic Boeing can build amazing planes and MD can secure a steady defence revenue stream.

But then the moonshots quietly end. Boeing makes cost effective tweaks to its current lineup, and lands fat defence contracts that pad the bottom line and drive the stock to stratospheric prices. It gets comfortable, it gets efficient, and it stops being what made it great in the first place.

Apple post-Jobs will likely be an extremely profitable company for many years to come. But it will never again be the pioneering company that forged whole markets from vision and belief.

And that's sad.