I would classify many of those as design decisions. Many of those seem like unavoidable were natural consequences of other decisions, but I agree the distinction isn't clean cut.
One of Tim Cook's strategic manufacturing decisions, as I recall, was to literally corner the market of NAND flash memory since the heyday of the iPod. Apple did and probably still does preorder a commanding proportion of the world's NAND flash production every year. Is that a strategic decision or just the natural consequence of consistently forecasting that you'll need that much NAND flash?
It sounds like I'm minimizing everything by deeming it "not strategic", but if you're going to characterizing the work Apple does, I don't think you'd be that far off characterizing it as intelligent people working out the natural consequences of a very small number of strategic decisions. If you're Apple, and you're going to make a touchscreen phone that doesn't suck, using Mac OS X technology, keeping Flash off, setting up the App Store the way it is are all consequences of that.
One of Tim Cook's strategic manufacturing decisions, as I recall, was to literally corner the market of NAND flash memory since the heyday of the iPod. Apple did and probably still does preorder a commanding proportion of the world's NAND flash production every year. Is that a strategic decision or just the natural consequence of consistently forecasting that you'll need that much NAND flash?
It sounds like I'm minimizing everything by deeming it "not strategic", but if you're going to characterizing the work Apple does, I don't think you'd be that far off characterizing it as intelligent people working out the natural consequences of a very small number of strategic decisions. If you're Apple, and you're going to make a touchscreen phone that doesn't suck, using Mac OS X technology, keeping Flash off, setting up the App Store the way it is are all consequences of that.