Steve Jobs also tried to cure his cancer with acupuncture and woo.
A more relavent criticism perhaps is that he recruited Scully. Also, did he hire other jugglers or similar individuals later in his career? I dont think the stunt should be praises without measuring its outcome.
Their software and hardware are not better than their competitors. At best, they are on-par with the best.
Not surprising given the enormous cost. Easy-Cheap-Good. Pick 2. Easy and Good.
Should anyone praise Apple for anything outside their marketing department?
Yes, a lot of these were inspired by prior work but iPhone still brought critical (often 10x) advances to each one—lowering the cost of the Apple II, designing a touch screen interface that worked, etc.