Your sample is biased. I assume you read most of this rants here (as do I), and this is a place mainly for software engineers and designers, not managers. They complain about their bosses, as do all, and that means you get a lot of complains about stupid managers (because everybody thinks the boss is stupid).

I don't believe for a second that there are no good managers, or that they are not necessary. Apple and Google produce the kind of software that they do because they have good managers (for the most part). The thing is, no one complains about his/her awesome manager. (In an episode of the Debug podcast, Don Melton describes his life as a manager and gives a little more insight about what goes on on a big company).

This is not to say that you couldn't have a system in which the engineers managed themselves, as in Valve.

Having said that, the quality of Samsung's software has not impressed anyone, so I kind of believe that they have a management problem.