Investing in Apple back then would have been like investing in a startup--investing in the engineering culture that made Mac OS X, not the product line itself. They were a company that secured a future from oblivion by making best-in-class stuff in a class with a huge upside for profit. I think a hacker could have seen potential that Wall Street did not.

And, like a startup, they took a number of swings before hitting the iOS home run, except they were also turning a modest profit during the swings.

Everyone should be skeptical that they can beat the market because it is true, there is overwhelming amount of evidence that few people can do it on a consistent basis, even some of the best fund managers.

Also, I think you picked up Apple for the right reason, even if it wasn't the immediate source of their success. For most of us (non-financial types), it is best to gamble on companies that we are familiar with. I play around with stocks on the side, and it should be no surprise that most of my winners were stocks for companies that I was familiar with (i.e used their product), and most of my losers were from stocks that I picked up after reading a crappy financial advice column.

OS X was the clean break that showed Apple (and Unix) were the future and Microsoft was the past. The rest followed loosely from there.