While I agree with the author's point about these ads - they don't feel like Apple to me, and they definitely are not great ads - his closing saying that this is no longer Steve Jobs's Apple is hyperbolic. On the one hand - of course it isn't. We have seen far more important changes coming out of their choices around product and dividend sharing than one marketing campaign. On the other hand, there hasn't been a large Apple marketing push for a while and this campaign has probably been in the works for most of that while. On the other other hand...
To the contrary I think those little details say a lot about what direction Apple is headed.
Something like a bad ad campaign can be shot down with a simple yes/no. A final product however takes thousands of decisions, many dependent upon each other, to product a final polished product. If the fluff around the edges starts looking weird you can bet the products that are really complicated are fucked.
On the positive side I think Steve Jobs taught the current generation of young leaders a lot. "Steve's" future work and vision will be seen in ideas outside of Apple.
