Apple has experienced periods of decline before. In the mid to late nineties, before Jobs returned, Apple stuck to polishing OS9, which was simply too archaic to compete with Windows 95, NT, and subsequent MS OS's of the nineties. They flip flopped on clones and ultimately maintained a losing status quo. This era also brought such blunders as the puck mouse, but towards the end Apple got a bit of a lift from the candy colored iMac. Still, had Apple not started branching out as they did, the dire predictions were probably true.
Is Apple in decline today? Their profits don't appear to be. Today's Apple also has a truly gargantuan nest-egg that could see the company through a protracted period of difficulty. It's too soon to tell if the company has become less innovative, but they are in a far superior position now than at any point in the past. The Apple brand isn't going anywhere for decades.
In the mid to late nineties, before Jobs returned, Apple stuck to polishing OS9
Correction: Apple didn't release OS 9 -- or even OS 8 -- until after Jobs returned.
Perhaps you mean System 7? Actually, Apple barely made any progress on System 7 because nearly all their OS engineers were working on the ill-fated Copland.
This era also brought such blunders as the puck mouse, but towards the end Apple got a bit of a lift from the candy colored iMac
The hockey puck mouse was also a Jobsism -- part of the iMac release.
I heard someone the other day saying that now that Jobs is gone they're bringing back the hokey colors to the product lines. I told them that it wasn't until Jobs was back that the colors were introduced and they didn't believe me.
You're right. OS8 and 9 were basically lipstick on the System 7 pig. I worked on a helpdesk part-time in University and had to support OS8 and OS9. Horrible, horrible operating systems. To make matters even more annoying, Apple hardware had a funny habit of hiding the power switch on the back of the box at the time too, so it was always fun explaining to professors how to reboot their hard-locked machines over the phone. The puck-mice were indeed post-Jobs, as were the iMacs. Despite those terrible mice, the iMacs were a big hit with people who liked pretty colors and didn't actually want to use their computers much. I suppose Jobs needed time to get into the swing of things. It wasn't until the iPod that Apple (and Jobs) really shifted into overdrive.
Is Apple in decline today? Their profits don't appear to be. Today's Apple also has a truly gargantuan nest-egg that could see the company through a protracted period of difficulty. It's too soon to tell if the company has become less innovative, but they are in a far superior position now than at any point in the past. The Apple brand isn't going anywhere for decades.