Is it that hard to admit that Apple products can no longer command a premium among its competitors? The company is now in a great trouble into irrelevancy because of years' inaction.
People have been spouting “Apple is going to fail” since their inception. People said the original iPhone was a fail for many reasons such as “no one wants a touchscreen” and more.[0] Until Apple fails, they’re not failing. They definitely changed directions under Tim Cook, but that’s because he’s not Steve Jobs. The Apple Watch has been a huge success with over 40% market share.[1] [0]: https://mashable.com/2017/06/…
Apple is in trouble because it doesn't have next iPhone, or iPhone4 to excite consumers. Adding incremental upgrade to iPhone while hiking up the price, is now a failed strategy and the market is punishing Apple for it. Only this time, they have nothing to offer.
Pivoting to service, where they aren't particularly competitive anyway, is like a pre-claimed surrender that they don't have the confidence to make their hardware business as profitable as it was.
I didn't see why people would be optimistic about Apple right now, except for the huge cash reserve they had because of iPhones. If they don't think out of box, they will be forgotten pretty soon, just like Nokia.