Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

Here's the best take yet on the way Apple has changed its stripes, literally, through the years.  Always amuses me the way "marketing" is described as embedded in Apple's DNA.  There's a more prosaic explanation: the guy at the top sees the world his customers see.  Then he makes products they'll want to buy.  Simple.  But, to paraphrase Einstein, simple is the ultimate sophistication.