“People talk a lot about brands. To me, a brand is one simple thing—trust. Your customers trust you… We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the brand. We spend a lot of time talking about how do we make the best products in the world.” —Steve Jobs
There’s no better case study in the power of brand-first thinking than Apple. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy. The business decision would’ve been to cut costs, chase volume, and build cheaper machines to compete with the flood of beige-box PCs.
Instead, Jobs made brand decisions—choices that prioritised identity, emotion, and the user—often at the expense of short-term logic. And those decisions changed everything.
Think Different: A Rallying Cry, Not a Campaign
Jobs’ first move wasn’t to launch a product. It was to launch a belief system. The Think Different campaign didn’t sell features. It reminded the world—and Apple employees—what the brand stood for: creativity, rebellion, and human potential.
It was a brand decision designed to restore confidence, internally and externally. And it worked.
The iMac: “Too Far Ahead of Its Time”
In 1998, Apple introduced the iMac.
No floppy drive. No legacy ports. Just USB and translucent plastic in colours no other tech brand would dare touch.
Critics scoffed. “No floppy drive?… There is such a thing as being too far ahead of your time.” —Macworld reader letter
But the iMac wasn’t just a product. It was a statement: computers don’t have to be grey, intimidating boxes. They can be personal. Approachable. Human.
Consumers responded. It was the best-selling computer of the 1998 holiday season. Apple went from losing $878 million to making $414 million in profit.
A brand decision. A bold one. And it rewired how people perceived personal technology.
The Stores: “A Very Painful and Expensive Mistake”
In 2001, Apple opened its first retail store. The industry laughed.
“I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.” —David Goldstein, retail consultant
Conventional wisdom was clear: Gateway failed. CompUSA was closing. Direct-to-consumer retail made no sense for a niche player like Apple.
But Apple’s stores weren’t about square footage or shelf space. They were about experience. They turned buying tech into something tactile, intuitive—even joyful.
Three years later, Apple Stores became the fastest retailer to reach $1 billion in annual sales.
The iPhone: Ballmer’s Laughter
When the iPhone launched in 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed on camera.
“$500? With a plan? It doesn’t even have a keyboard!”
Even Apple fans had doubts. No physical keyboard. Sealed battery. Carrier lock-in. It felt like Apple was choosing design over practicality.
But that was the point.
The iPhone was a brand decision through and through. Apple refused to let telecoms dictate features. No bloatware. No carrier logos. No compromises.
It was designed for people—not for partners or cynical profit.
And it worked. The iPhone didn’t just dominate sales—it redefined an entire category.
From Brand to Business
For nearly two decades, Apple followed the same formula: Make decisions that are right for the brand. Trust will follow. Revenue will follow.
But over the last few years, something has changed. Not suddenly. Subtly. Gradually. But meaningfully.
The Butterfly Keyboard
In 2015, Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard—thinner, sleeker, more “futuristic.” But it was unreliable. A speck of dust could break a key. Apple denied the issue for years, while users—ourselves included—cycled through repair programs and external keyboards.
Tech columnist Joanna Stern wrote an exquisite Wall Street Journal column without using the letter “E” because her MacBook’s “E” key had failed.
Even die-hard Apple champions like Daring Fireball’s John Gruber called it “the worst product in Apple history.”
It looked good. But it didn’t work. Keeping it around for so long wasn’t a brand decision. It was a business decision. And it damaged trust.
The Developer Revolt
The App Store was meant to stand for quality and trust. But as services revenue became a priority, the vision distorted.
High-profile developers like Basecamp and Epic Games publicly rebelled. Indie developers launched a “Developers Union,” warning that Apple had lost its sense of partnership.
The message was clear: Apple stopped treating developers as creators to empower—and started treating them as revenue to extract. The result? Fewer native Mac apps. Less adoption of new iOS features. And seemingly no one developing for Vision Pro. The experience across all platforms is degrading.
The Services Push: Growth at What Cost?
Services aren’t the issue. Done right, they can extend the brand in seamless, useful ways. But Apple’s execution feels off-brand.
Apple Music lacks the intuitive charm of iTunes. TV+ seemly is the name of a thousand products and services have a great show but is clumsy to use. iCloud Storage is woefully inadequate. Worse, these services are pushed through constant pop-ups—even on devices that once felt ad-free and elegantly neutral.
The App Store is now flooded with knock-off casino games targeting kids—experiences that contradict everything Apple once stood for. Even legitimate apps Apple forces a degraded experience. You can’t buy Kindle books directly in the app. Netflix can’t explain how to sign up. Apple blocks even basic functionality, users be damned.
And it chips away at the very thing Apple was built on: trust.
The Trust Account
Jobs once compared brand equity to a bank account. “Every great experience is a deposit. Every bad one is a withdrawal.”
Apple’s account is still rich. But the withdrawals have begun In earnest:
When your keyboard breaks, and Apple pretends nothing’s wrong—that’s a withdrawal.
When developers feel extorted instead of celebrated—that’s a withdrawal.
When your premium device nags you to subscribe—that’s a withdrawal.
The Choice Ahead
Every great company faces a fork in the road:
Optimise the business you’ve built—or stay true to the brand that built it. The business lens says: squeeze more revenue, ship faster, control the ecosystem.
The brand lens says: create better experiences, earn more trust, lead through vision. Because when your most loyal advocates stop feeling seen, safe, and supported…
They stop recommending. They stop upgrading. They stop caring.
Think Different stops being a rallying cry for the brand. And starts becoming a call to try a different brand.
Back to Virtue
“Virtue does not come from money, but rather from virtue comes money, and all other things good to man.” —Socrates
A brand needs to be found, understood and lived, only then can it be loved.
When Apple prioritised virtue—human-first design, developer empowerment, product excellence—it became the world’s most valuable company because it was loved.
Now that it’s prioritising money—ads, lock-ins, growth at all costs—it risks becoming just another business.
The question isn’t whether Apple will remain profitable. It will. The real question is: Will it remain loved?
That’s still Apple’s choice to make.
