I recently took a look back at the original Apple/II and it strikes me how they became the opposite, design-wise, of their open source origins. A number of PC’s that were all enclosed and impossible to upgrade or mess with from the late 70s and early 80s are, with their companies, in the dustbin of history. But that Apple II case was easy to open, service and add a card to. Apple made computers increasingly user friendly while closing access, turning off hardware geeks while exciting graphics geeks, and the product always came at a such cost premium. I think in getting into bed with IBM with the PowerPC during the 90s, Apple appeared to be waving a white flag. All of this contributed to that “three quarters from death” cloud over Apple that you describe.
Also graphics speed comparisons were always apples v. oranges so to speak. On paper it was easy to market PC graphics as superior if you just looked at the numbers. There were other ways to do the maths to understand Apple’s edge. Those took too much work for a layperson but the user experience generally shot all that to pieces anyway (in Apple’s favor).
Returning to my initial thought above… to take apart any apple product starting with the MacIntosh? God no.
