I saw how the iPhone was received at the time. In my environment of Nokia enthusiastics in Europe it was received with extreme skepticism.
Everybody said: "A phone where your fingers cloud the screen never will take off". "The battery lasts so little for a phone". "No way I am using a phone with the battery soldered". "I can't type while in the class, meeting or whatever", "glass phones are so fragile"...
Three years later, all of them will be using an iPhone or iPhone-like phone.
People value success histories, because knowing what is going to success is really useful.
E.g I bought Apple stock before the iPhone launch because there were rumors that Apple would be launching it, and I supposed that Apple were going to do it right after the people of "Telefonica"(a european telecomunications company) offering me something like 60 dollars for the entire rights of my smartphone App, which took months to make and won a big contest as people loved it.
It was so monopolized market that was a big opportunity for disruption.
I won a lot of money with the Apple stock, after that I bought stock from companies like ARM holdings and device sensors as I supposed that were going to benefit from a boom in smartphones and tablets later.
I supposed it right and the money I earned was extremely useful in making my own company later.
On the other hand, I personally met the guy that founded twitter and did not invested on his company, because it was a startup like any other.
There is value in knowing what is going to success, and this is the reason people is interested in success stories, as learning about them let them identify future success.
People care about Apple products only because Apple has a surprisingly high level of recent successes.