Comment by jhatemyjob

They used to be able to. I don't think they can anymore. The iPhone 6 was 3 years after Jobs died. Apple's corporate/engineering culture has had 12 additional years to rot since then. If the Scott Forstall situation, Chris Lattner situation, etc, tells you anything, it's that Apple cannot make basic, common-sense tradeoffs anymore. All they can do is copy whatever the wider industry is doing.

All of the excuses people are coming up with in these comments are just that: excuses. Look at the sibling comment by musictubes, for example. Citing these ethereal "critics" and "most people" when in reality Walt Mossberg was the only critic whose opinion mattered.

Occam's Razor: The Innovator's Dilemma. It's a rotting, bloated megacorp with too much to lose, that doesn't take risks, and can't change direction. The direction it's in is "bigger phones", for whatever reason. So we're gonna keep getting bigger phones. It's that simple.