> there were actually plenty of people who predicted pretty much exactly what would happen and why
You have the full spectrum of opinions on what will happen and why for pretty much every non-trivial topic. It's the power of hindsight that lets you select the correct ones and maybe even assume that it was indeed trivial, all the information was out there.
Would you bet your life savings on that one person who predicts against the trend? That's not dumb, it's realistic and cautious. In some situations the risk isn't worth it.
When the iPhone came out I knew Apple would own the future, I could feel it in my bones not only because their software technology was so ridiculously far in advance of everyone else, but because none of their competitors except Google even seemed aware what was happening or why and Google at the time wasn't even in the game yet. A lot of my friends thought I was going a bit crazy, I was so sure Apple was going to utterly own the future. I was entranced by the early iPhones, they felt like something out of Star Trek except even better. Maybe part of it was I always hated mobile phones, they were so clunky and ugly and the tech was so primitive. The iPhone felt like an advanced graphics workstation in an era of teletype terminals.
The problem was I was recently married, had two kids and we'd just bought our first house at a huge financial stretch, and had no spare savings whasoever. We were practically living hand to mouth. When we did have spare savings 6 or 7 years later I did consider buying some APPL, but I thought most of the opportunity cost had already passed and Android seemed to be catching up at last. Dumb.
But honestly, imagine what today would be like if Andy Rubin hadn't immediately ditched their plans for Android to be a BlackBerry clone and switched tracks to cloning the iPhone. Microsoft genuinely didn't get it. They took 3 years to even realise there was a problem.
Sorry, ranting, but thinking about this really triggered memories from that era.