It has been over six years that Steve Jobs, the late co-founder and CEO of Apple passed away, leaving one of the most influential companies in the world, in the hands of his most trusted people.

Since the very beginning in 1976, Steve Jobs built Apple in his own image and the products and services launched under his reign were proof of that fact. To a certain degree, they still are.

He was regarded as a visionary and used to run a tight ship at Apple, to a point where things often got downright ugly. If you’ve read the stories, you’d know that he could get almost inhumanly cruel with the very people he worked with as he demanded nothing short of excellence.

In his absence over the years, things have changed at Apple. It has evolved under the new management of Tim Cook and although they are trying their best, Steve’s absence clearly shows in the way Apple has been operating for all these years. Today, I want to talk about some of them.

1. The iPhone 5c Wouldn’t Have Happened

In 2013, for the first time, Apple broke the trend of releasing only one iPhone a year and announced an iPhone 5s and a plastic iPhone 5c that came in various colors.

The 5c was being positioned as a more affordable version of the iPhone. I was watching the event live and no matter how convincing Jony Ive (the lead designer at Apple) sounded in the introduction videos, I was immediately left disappointed.

I just couldn’t help but keep thinking that, that would never have happened if Steve was still alive. Apple has always been about all things premium and the 5c was anything but premium. I have seen and used one in real life and it just doesn’t feel like an iPhone!

Maybe that’s just me but many tech experts keep referring to the iPhone 5c has a huge failure and a mistake that shouldn’t have been done. Maybe that’s why they never launched a plastic iPhone again.

2. Too Many Products!!!

If you are aware of Apple’s history, you would know that Steve was ousted from his own company in 1985 and it almost went bankrupt by 1997. It was because the company was just doing too much in terms of numbers of products.

That’s why the first thing that Steve did after his iconic return to Apple was that he killed a majority of the products that Apple was offering at the time and focused Apple’s efforts to a very limited number of products. Very limited!

For years, that strategy worked because not only does it not create confusion for the customers but it also goes well with the company’s philosophy of minimalism and simplification.

Today however, it looks like Apple is starting to do the same mistakes by offering too many products. There used to be only one iPhone a year and now there are three! There used to be only one iPad a year and now there are three! Same goes for MacBooks and other product lines.

3. Quality Has Gone Down

Apple has always been known for its world class quality and for its products that “just work”. That was never 100% true even at the time of Steve Jobs, but regardless that’s what the general belief was anyways.

As I said before, Steve Jobs demanded perfection and excellence from all his employees and that showed in their products and services. The insane attention to details resulted in gorgeous hardware and software that worked together to provide the best user experience.

Sadly, this quality has gone down and has been going down each year now. The hardware side of things are still pretty good but the software side of things have surely gone down a notch or two.

Take the Apple Maps disaster for example and iTunes 11 debacle. Recently it seems that a company that only released perfected software is now starting to sell half baked products (especially software, including iOS and macOS).

4. Innovation Has Slowed Down

If you are someone who gets the feeling that Apple has become a company that offers more evolutionary products than revolutionary products these days, then you are not alone. In fact, many tech pundits have said that Apple’s pace of innovation has slowed down.

This is again where Steve’s absence is felt directly. Yes, the guy used to be cruel and menacing for his employees but he got results out of them and got them fast. Also, he was a great visionary and had an ability to connect the dots like no other.

Tim Cook is no visionary. Yes, under his reign, Apple has broken more financial records than ever, but Apple simply doesn’t have that image of being the trend setters and re-inventors anymore. Launching products with better specifications and gimmicky features can be considered as innovation but certainly not revolutionary.

The only new product category that has come out of Apple after Steve’s death is the Apple watch (product wise) and that too, it was late in the game. Also, product lines simply feel too stretched out at this point and almost as if they were supposed to have launched last year!