Last week, I talked about Apple’s self-perception as a struggling company, fighting for good taste in a world of mediocrity. These predictions from the past are why Apple fans still cheer when the company includes Easter Eggs in its products that poke fun at Windows, despite the fact that the company is now a gorilla in the music industry and is stronger than it has ever been.
Being forced to listen to those kinds of predictions for years created the “us against the world” attitude that many Apple fans (including myself) still exhibit. I think that most Apple fans in the mid-1990s knew in their bones at the time that all of those grim predictions were very likely accurate. They turned out to be wrong, but only because Apple did a good job with OS X and made a great bet with the iPod.
Update: This post has been edited for clarity.