Growing revenues and profits belie the “Haunted Empire” claim that Apple “teeters”
Apple After Jobs: Pretty Much the Same as Ever — You could be forgiven, after reading “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs,” for concluding that Apple is on the verge of going belly up.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands four days after Tim Cook publicly dismissed Yukari Iwatani Kane's book as “nonsense”, and it extends that rebuttal from a CEO's quip into a data argument: the Times points at growing revenues and profits and says the “teetering” framing doesn't match the ledger. It is also the latest round in a long-running genre — Newsweek's gloomy “One Bad Apple” in 2008, CNET noting in 2009 that Apple thrived even with Jobs absent, and Mercury News cataloguing a spectacular year amid the doldrums in 2010.
The pushback isn't unanimous optimism, though. Benedict Evans had already framed the “Apple paradox” in 2013, and within days of this article, confirmed IFPI/RIAA figures showed double-digit iTunes download declines alongside an iPad replacement cycle that CIRP found looks more like Macs than iPhones — real soft spots the book's critics have to concede even while rejecting its failure thesis.
First-order effects
- Cook's March 18 dismissal of the book gains mainstream reinforcement: a Times byline arguing the financial record contradicts the decline narrative, amplified the same day by Daring Fireball and a broad set of tech journalists including Farhad Manjoo, Christopher Mims, Jason Yarow and Kara Swisher.
- Kane's book now competes against confirmed numbers rather than anecdote — its “teetering” premise is contradicted point-by-point by Apple's reported revenues and profits for the period.
Second-order effects
- The rebuttal forces the bear case onto subtler ground: with headline growth undisputed, skeptics pivot to the confirmed weak points — falling iTunes download sales pushing Apple toward rumored moves like an Android iTunes app or a subscription streaming service, and slower iPad refresh cycles.
- Widespread syndication turns the book launch into a reputational contest over who speaks credibly about post-Jobs Apple, raising the bar for any future decline thesis to clear before it sticks with investors or press.
Third-order effects
- The episode cements a recurring pattern dating back at least to 2008–2010 coverage: each perceived post-founder wobble revives a collapse narrative, and each is tested against the income statement — making sustained financial performance, not design lore, the arbiter of Apple's health.
- If the pattern holds, the durable question shifts from survival to transition: whether Apple can convert a maturing hardware business into recurring services revenue as one-time purchases like iTunes downloads shrink.
The trend: Post-founder Apple keeps drawing obituary-style decline books, and each one is being answered less by rhetoric than by the company's own financials while the real debate migrates to services and product cycles.