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Around 20 years ago Apple was worth maybe $4 billion total, and everyone was amazed that they came back from near bankruptcy a few years prior. People said that's it, they'll never get bigger. Then Steve Jobs had the idea of creating a retail store, after having success with the iTunes Store. These two things are what propelled Apple into fantastic growth.

I remember the Apple "death watch" of the mid to late 1990s. Almost everybody predicted that Apple would go out of business and they were all 100% wrong. Which is probably why so many people hate Apple. People hate to be proven wrong for some odd reason.

I also remember when Apple was laughed at for bringing out the iPod, which at the time, was several times more expensive than the MP3 players at the time. People said nobody would ever buy it. Not when they can buy some Diamond Rio player for a fraction of the cost even though you had to interface with some clunky application through the USB port and spend 30 minutes or so uploading the 20 or so songs you could fit on it!

Then Apple was laughed at for the iTunes Store - until after the first week, a million songs got downloaded!

Then Apple was laughed at for the retail stores. What a stupid idea that was! Until it was shown that Apple Stores had the highest $$ revenue per square foot of any retailer on Earth including high end jewelry stores!

Then Apple was laughed at for the iPhone...I can go on and on.

Bottom line is people hate Apple because 1) They were proven wrong back in the 1990s when they smugly predicted Apple would be out of business and 2) they missed out on buying Apple stock in the early 2000s - in which every $1,000 invested would be worth around $50,000 today.

I hated Apple because I sold MS-DOS computers. We laughed at their 9” black and white screen, their proprietary hardware and software, and their ridiculous price tag.

36 years later and my business runs as many Apple devices as we can. Lowest cost of ownership of any computer. Great cross device connectivity. Easy to manage networking.

Then Apple was laughed at for the iPhone...I can go on and on.

The laughers... biggest one was the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer especially. He laughed at and dissed the iPod, saying no one would ever want it. Then years later copied it and marketed the Zune, a huge failure. He laughed at and dissed the Apple retail store, saying no one would ever shop there. Then years later copied it (even matching the look and feel) as the Microsoft Store (which looks like a ghost town). He laughed at the iPhone, saying no one wanted a mobile phone without a keyboard - until it was a huge success and Microsoft came out with the Windows Phone, which was a failure and discontinued. Microsoft CEO Ballmer could not visualize the future, even when Apple showed the way, and constantly laughed at Apple but then tried to copy them. People are laughing at Steve Ballmer.