What I miss about the old Apple is mainly the amount of care and attention put into their products. They really tried to make things that people would enjoy to use. Early iOS is a good example of this, everything is easy to find and there is not much of a learning curve due to visual cues. It wasn't about having fancy animations or crazy effects, it was about getting what you needed done and with ease. This is also evident in old versions of Mac OS X. macOS as they call it now is so bloated and has some strange visual problems.
That leads into another thing I miss about old Apple, quality control. They put a lot more work into their software and hardware back then. The iOS 11 fiasco is pathetic. The whole bendgate thing, the MacBook keyboard problems, and more. Another thing I hate now is the removal of ports. Of course Apple was famous for not including a floppy drive with the iMac, but by 1998 it was obviously becoming legacy tech. The removal of the headphone jack on iPhone and USB-A on Macs is ridiculous.
Another point: Advertisements. The old iPod adds, and the PC vs Mac ads were great. Also the think different ad was one of my favorite ads for anything. Now they are so overdone it is almost funny. I could add a whole list of things, like the increasing price of the products. I think it is crazy that the fully subsidized iPhone XR starts at $750 on a 2-year contract, versus the iPhone 4 starting at $200 on a 2-year contract. Getting back to design, the Apple website used to be so simple, I cannot stand the current site.
The Apple that cared about its products and customers is dying, if not already dead. Every time I use an old Apple product or an old version of iOS/Mac OS X, I always am remind of how bad things have gotten. The old OSes were a joy to use.