It feels like they are spread way too thin, and individual teams are not allowed to improve their app/services/parts on their own. If I had to work on Apple Notes I would have several suggestions, not all worthy of work of-course, but letting a lot of apps go stagnant is something else entirely.
Apple used to have to roll-their-own to hedge their bets. For example, Safari and iWork came about when there was a possibility that Microsoft would pull support for IE and Office for Mac.
Still need people to press buttons though. But I feel too many decisions have to go through a tiny set of people. But I have no insights into the org. I do wish they would do more smaller releases. Like update Notes without a full OS update.