I disagree with Gruber's interpretation here. Apple wants to do everything well; excellent software is a by-product. But as a focus? Not really.

This is not to say Apple doesn't make good software, but there is very little in the actual output of the company that supports Gruber's notion.

Back in early iPhone days, one of the biggest complaints was a lack of multi-tasking in iOS -- you could only ever have one app running at a time. There were no push notifications, etc. The Apple explanation, per Jobs, was that they consciously chose to exclude that capability. A few versions later, voila -- iOS supports multi-tasking. This sort of cycle -- explain why a feature didn't exist due to some chosen policy/belieft, then include it in later revisions -- became a pattern for Apple.

Flip to the hardware side, and the story is different. When has Apple hardware, since Jobs return in the nineties, ever been a compromise? It hasn't, because Jobs focused on the hardware. While the software is important, it is really a means to an end. The hardware meets this condition too, but it is much higher in the pecking order of consideration than software.