> I am unsure that apple themselves understand why their hardware ... has been so successful [like I do]

You have a bold career as a technical journalist ahead of you!

Obviously they are playing 12d chess. They stopped selling high memory machines, they stopped selling pro machines. They are the king of local Ai compute, definitely not stumbling backwards into a product category they didn't know existed.

With their apple finger right there on the pulse, they are going hard on the VR/AR glasses (following the lead of the visionary CEO of facebook), cars and folding phones. By the end of the year (tm) we 100% will have all the features that were showcased and demonstrated 2 releases ago.

Having worked at Apple for over a couple of decades, I can attest there are some very (very) capable and intelligent people there.

I trust they know more about their business model than some rando on the internet, sorry.

Those of us that are less capable and less intelligent must just be holding it wrong.

you don’t need to be less intelligent or less capable, but you will necessarily be less informed.

How you hold it is, of course, up to you.