I think it's weird to compare failed products within a company (and minor products at that) to failed companies. I think you may have not even listed some of the more notable ones (The Apple LISA, the iPod HiFi). But he wasn't betting the company on the Cube, or MobileMe, or even Ping. These were low-stakes (and arguably low effort) bets taken within a company that was simultaneously having insane success in other departments. The G4 Cube came out between the iMac and the iPod (2 years after the iMac, 1 year before the iPod). That seems like a damn good product-line, and if you could choose any one to miss on, it'd be the niche prosumer device, not the two consumer devices.

> Remember NeXT? > Remember he got kicked out of Apple?

These could be interpreted either way. It seems all part of the larger "Apple story arc", and more comparable to Tesla's shaky middle period, than as binary successes and failures void of any surrounding context. However, I do mean that it could go either way. I wouldn't fault someone as judging them as true failures separate from the later Apple success.