When Steve Jobs came back as "iCEO" in the late '90s, Apple stock was roughly $8/share (pre-splits). They weren't a total nobody, but they certainly weren't interesting enough to any big fish that there was any push to put pressure on them to act like a more "traditional" company. And Jobs kept doing things his way for the next 15 years, until his medical retirement and untimely death, and those things increased Apple's stock price fairly steadily. Until the iPhone came out, of course, at which point it increased dramatically.

But by then, people were already used to the idea that Apple would do things Apple's way. (And some people were so used to the idea that Apple was Doomed that they still preach it every time there's any new Apple news.) And it's so utterly clear that Apple doing things Apple's way works—for Apple.

Any other company trying to do things Apple's way—or even its own unique way, rather than the way the markets want—would be fighting an incredibly strong current.