Yeah, this article is mostly bluster. There's no special "internal competition" where 10 teams line up at tribal council and Jobs snuffs out their torches one by one. Organizational structure is very mundane, honestly. There's the kernel team, the CoreOS team, Frameworks, iApps, Pro Apps, the Image and Media Group (affectionately known as IMG), Safari, Developer Tools, Server (now merged with Dev Tools), and maybe one or two others I'm forgetting.

Look, the Eureka myth is a myth as this article rightly points out. But the "just work harder and you'll succeed" myth that it embraces is, likewise, a myth. The key to Apple's success is as old as humankind itself. Jobs is just continuing the same tradition that started when the first monkey looked at his seed-eating chump friends, then down at the rock in his hands, and then decided "screw the nuts and berries, I'm going to go kill me a wildebeest!"

That first monkey probably died. Jobs's first company called Apple effectively died. His second company, originally called NeXT, nearly died. It's a wild stroke of luck that he was able to merge the two corpses and finally succeed.

Having worked at Apple, and now at a more "normal" company, I've seen both sides of the same story. It goes like this...

CEO: We need a hit!

MARKETING MANAGER #1: I have an idea!

CEO: Do you think it can make money?

MARKETING MANAGER #1: Yes.

MARKETING MANAGER #2: Wait, I also have an idea!

ENGINEER #3: I have an idea.

CEO: Wait, there's a professional speaking. Mr. Marketing Manager, can your idea make money?

MARKETING MANAGER #2: Sure.

MARKETING MANAGERS #3-9 (in unison): We ALSO have ideas!

CEO: Great! Will they all make money?

SYSADMIN: Um...we could be running our servers more efficiently if...

CEO: Quiet! There's work going on here.

MARKETING MANAGERS #3-9: YES!

CEO: Excellent! Let's do all the ideas!!!

ENGINEERING MANAGER: Um...excuse me, we don't have very many engineering resources...

(CEO has already walked out the door)

ENGINEERING MANAGER (frowning, dejected): ...oh

--- vs ---

STEVE: Who's got a good idea?

(in the audience 100 hands are raised simultaneously)

STEVE: No. No. Nope. Nu-uh. As if. Yeah right. Nope. Not gonna happen. No. No...

(this goes on)

STEVE: Ok. So we're doing a tablet!

MARKETING MANAGER (obviously new on the job): Um. But, excuse me Mr. Jobs. The tablet market has been stagnating for over a decade and dozens of our competitors who have attempted to enter the market with a myriad of different technologies have all foundered or given up outright.

STEVE (glaring): We're. doing. a. tablet.