Who's to say there isn't "interest"? Some people like the new look, maybe Cook does too.
Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".
I'm not even talking about subjective things like tastes in icon styles. I'm talking about absolutely quantifiable missteps, such as bright-yellow symbols on a white paper background.
"If Steve were still around..." has been said so many times that it's a cliche. Steve shipped lots of crap [quantifiable crap, even]; I'm sure Apple will continue to ship lots of crap in the future. Doesn't mean they're doomed or even that quality has gone down.
Yeah; I very much admire Steve's drive and vision, but he was still responsible for brushed metal, corinthian leather, and all the rest. Not to mention (arguable) design missteps like that awful aspect ratio iPod Nano. So let's keep things in perspective here...
I didn't mean to sound like that. From where I'm standing (and it's OK if this opinion isn't common), iOS and to a lesser degree OS X show outward signs of the internal struggles at Apple. There are some things that should have been caught, or that at least would have been more likely to be vetoed. It's a very feature/product-driven company, high-level oversight is expected but seems to be missing in places.
To use another example, with the new iCloud apps (especially iOS backports like Notes and its ilk) on OS X, because there is no save button there is no way to tell if the document has actually been committed to storage or not. If you close the app, the document might be on the cloud somewhere, but it's just as likely to be trapped on a Mac's harddrive that has just been put to sleep. Not a good experience.
Erm, that's not what I meant and I suspect you know that. I didn't assert it was "a magical [something]" or anything, just bad UI. Open Notes, edit a document, close it, go away, expect it to be synced on your iPad: fail. And no normal user will do CMD-S, that was the whole point of them abolishing explicit document saving.
Notes are synced without you needing to do anything. If you close the application before a sync is polled (within 5sec after you stop editing as far as I can tell) why would you expect it to sync? That's like sending an email and closing the browser while it's posting the data and then being mad it didn't send.
"Sending an email" is something the user initiates. "Syncing to iCloud" is something the OS initiates.
Also, I would hope that "sending an email and closing the browser window", one day, will work like "sending an email and quitting the mail app" works today.
Power Nap is meant to do this - keep stuff syncing, backing up, etc regardless of lid state. Now, whether it's smart enough to flush any synchronizations that are still in progress when the lid is closed or you have to wait a few minutes until it half-wakes-up and does its thing, I'm not sure. Also, I believe by default it's off when a power supply isn't attached.
Pulling out one example of what may be a poor user experience and then generalizing that the sum of these subjective things is "sign of the internal struggles at Apple" is reaching a bit.
Apple is a hot topic these days, and many want to be a critic about the smallest things, followed by generalizing these thoughts into an "Apple is circling the drain" type of argument. Apple has never been perfect.
Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".