It’s not so much spotting trends. I’d argue all of those were obvious by the time Apple took definitive action. The difference is that most other vendors tend to leave in legacy connectors and media for the time period when pulling them out will lead to outrage in forums such as this one.

Well Firewire was a fail. It was great in term of tech but it never caught on outside of Sony and Apple products(both contributes to the standard)

WiFi