How do you reconcile the success Apple has had, both on Wall Street and in the marketplace, with your concrete reasons as to why they should be unsuccessful?
I would say two main reasons they are successful:
1) success with consumers via iMac
2) despite the adoption of ever more unethical tactics (ROM, downgrades) a loyal professional base with a pent up need for an upgrade.
What else could it be? Macs are no longer faster than PCs. The OS hasn't changed to the point that a massive migration of Wintel users decided to migrate. Apple doesn't make printers anymore. I doubt the Monitor sales make that much. The consumer model has changed public perception of Apple. Perception is everything in stocks. If it wasn't you wouldn't have been able to buy in so cheap 2 years ago.
I'd be willing to bet that professional user statistics would indicate a slight erosion in % use.
However what I grouse about the most is the slow erosion of this loyal base. I think Jobs saw this loyal base as solid no wonder what he did and is exploiting it in order to pump the stock price. I think it needed to be done, but he may have gone overboard on the consumer thing. Careful observation reveals unrest among former Mac lovers. It used to be we loved our Macs. This is turning into "they are still better than PeeCees". It's a slow process but among my friends it is evident. We are basically trapped into Mac use due to investments, both financial and educational. As I said and will continue to say, Mac ARE more useful to me at this time. Of course if I was writing JAVA or doing 3D, no contest.
And, to me, the future continues to look like Linux. It all depends on what software is available. If I could get Dreamweaver, Premiere, and a few more like them on Linux I'd probably switch right now. The though of getting GIMP for free is way enticing. As it is, I think I've got one more Mac to buy and a couple of years to use it before I migrate.
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