[JadeNB]

But surely the lesson from Microsoft is that Apple won't stay forever the biggest company in the world if they keep making products people don't want. On the other hand, if they keep making products that they think people want and we think they don't, and if they keep being successful, then maybe it's we the pundits, rather than Apple the company or its satisfied customers (which is not all of them!), who are wrong?

(I say this as someone who would like his phone to have a headphone jack, and doesn't personally want a new iPhone—and, on a more personal note (I'm a several-generations-out-of-date Android user not much affected by current iPhone trends), who hates the direction of macOS and wishes it were possible to live in the land of Snow Leopard forever—but also has reluctantly to concede that Apple has a better track record than I do for predicting and shaping the tech marketplace.)

[deong]

Well, Microsoft's primary products are still completely dominant in the markets they're in. Windows and Office are still the 800-pound gorillas (though of course mac OS has narrowed the gap). What happened to Microsoft is more that everyone shifted to a new market (mobile) that they weren't prepared for or strong in.

Eventually, sure. If they made poor decisions for a long enough period of time, their customers would probably go elsewhere. But what I'm talking about here are the odd one-off poor decisions here and there. It may be true that 90% of Apple's customers really want a headphone jack. If that were true, I'd say removing it was a poor move, even if that entire 90% collectively goes, "Well shit. I guess I'll have to live with this overpriced and clunky wireless crap." No product is perfect. You can make a good product worse and still have people say, "Well, it's still good enough I guess."