At the time, it was a sport of sorts to predict when Apple would fold entirely. It was always imminent. Then came Mac OS X, iMac, iBook, and iPod ... and the rest is history
At every step Apple was a few months from being bankrupt and useless. Because Dell/Google/HP/RIM/Sony/whoever would undercut their CLEARLY overpriced product and their sales would evaporate.
At some point in the last five to seven years you started to see if you were in fewer of those takes. In 2018 Apple became the first trillion dollar company and somewhere along the line the “Apple‘s going to fail any day now“ meme died. It’s very clear Apple is here to stay.
But don’t worry. Every product is a failure. After all Steve Jobs died and the company can’t work without him. The iPad was going to be a failure. The Apple Watch was going to be a failure. The AirPods were going to be a failure.
So don’t worry. There’s still tons of Apple pessimism available. It just changed targets.
In 08-10 the accounting for iPhone sales (GAAP? I don't recall the details, just regurgitating what I read at the time, had something to do with the way the devices were subsidized) seems to have not yet made it obvious how much money Apple was printing. I knew from following people much smarter than me that I should be investing all my money in Apple stocks, I just didn't have any to invest.
The iPhone 3GS took off quite well, but I’m not sure it was really clear to people just how big of a juggernaut it was until the iPhone 4, especially when it came to Verizon.
and it's funny how quiet things are now. Toyota just announced they aim to be producing 3 million EVs by 2030. That will put them about 6-7 years behind Tesla.
All quiet.
I think it was fair to question Tesla. The Roadster was ultra low volume. The S was pretty low volume and high price (limiting potentially sales). Good, but still small. The X had a lot of problems during development and still not too high in volume due to price.
Finally getting the 3 out the door after all the delays and the tons of orders that came from that were the thing that seemed to cement them as not going to fail at any moment. I mean Musk has explicitly said they came REAL close to the end trying to get the 3 out, so it was somewhat fair.
In contrast with Apple the doomsaying continued for at least 10 years after they were very safe.
Seems a rather different to me.