Not in the view of the general public. The 'colourful era' of Mac G3s, and fancy iPod ads went a long way into making the average consumer see them as trendy, cool, and disrupting the normal boring tech industry we were used to. That reputation got them really far by riding the wave into the launch of the iPhone.
Since then their reputation has been slowly eroding with the average consumer with the combined stagnation of product design, and the string of high profile anti consumer and anti competitive moves highlighted in the media. We have seen this before in big tech, and I look forward to the next cool disruptor taking their place.
That was exactly during the humble phase when the possible bankruptcy was still not yet fully sorted out.
They were also doing visits to universities showing how great it was the BSD / NeXTSTEP foundations of OS X, for doing UNIX related stuff.
Similar to how NeXT used to position itself against Sun, and other UNIX workstation vendors.
During my CERN stay at 2003 - 2004, they did visits to our IT telling more or less the same.
Had the coloured Macs with OS X Aqua or the iPod failed the market, that was it, yet another footnote of remarkable computing history company now gone.
Yep, as I keep saying. They built a bit of good reputation by breaking the mold, so the average consumer thought they were the greatest tech company ever. As time has gone on the mask has started to slip and the general population are starting to see them for the big business they are.
We techies always saw it, but the average consumers are only just begining to catch up.
Since then their reputation has been slowly eroding with the average consumer with the combined stagnation of product design, and the string of high profile anti consumer and anti competitive moves highlighted in the media. We have seen this before in big tech, and I look forward to the next cool disruptor taking their place.