That’s simplifying the question. Apple is frequently making radical changes, so certainly there will be very loud critiques every time. But there’s a difference between noise at introduction time and complains that are sustained in time.
Let’s take a look at the examples you cited. I agree apple was right on the first two examples. I’ll add to that list removing the floppy drive, then removing the dvd drive. There was also a lot of fuss about Jobs refusing to support blu ray. Macs weren’t better products for that, but in time it stopped being relevant.
Now, for the rest of your list. People complaining about app store are two subsets, those who genuinely want alternative software loading methods, and by now they must be on android, and epic and spotify ceos. Oh, and also Mark Zuckerberg. They have a clear interest on that side. So I wouldn’t qualify this one as customer complaining en masse.
Now, on the jack and usb-c, apple is doing a worse product. Everyone qould be better if we had the same charging standard, and we are getting nothing in return by being forced to use lightning. Those are not fatal flaws, and apple will keep selling lots and lots of phones in spite of that.
Now let’s go through some examples of complains and apple backtracking because customers were right.
The mac being neglected. At first, people who would defend apple no matter what refused to acknowledge said neglecting, often stating that what apple was selling was more than enough for anyone (some models unchanged in specs and pricing for years). Then the argument changed to “an ipad is all you’ll ever need, you’re stuck in the past”. Then the situation was so bad that even Cook had to send an internal memo to reassure apple’s workers that the mac was a very important part of the company and it will get attention once again.
Speaking of the mac, you possibly remember the amount of criticism the trashcan mac pro received. In a never before seen movement, apple publicly acknowledged they were wrong.
Lack of support for external drives on the ipad. After valid complaints they finally introduced it.
And last but not least, the not enough bashed butterfly keyboard. A design so atrocious that even using it in the vacuum wouldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t break, and so cleverly designed that a broken key would mean changing half the computer. After four years of stubbornly refusing to address the problem, apple had to reverse course.
So, is apple right disregarding every customer complaint? No, because they don’t. Apple is a company that is led by very smart people, who know that taking risks has some inherent criticism associated, but that also know how to listen to their customers.
I would categorize the touchbar as the headphone jack and usbc. It doesn’t make better the product, but it won’t harm the sales, so I guess we’re stuck with it at least until a major redesign.
USB/Lighting:
Lightning has a massive ecosystem of accessories so changing it wouldn't be painful for many the customers while moving to USB would add very little benefits compared to the loss. Not everyone has your same needs.
MAC neglecting:
It turned out they were actually working on a lot of macs. If today society wasn't so similar in behavior to a self-entitled and spoiled crybaby you wouldn't have seen all that noise. Cook had to send the memo because of the noise from the outside, only selected people that work on them knows about new machines or new designs at Apple.
Previous than current Mac Pro:
When you try new products you don't always get them right, nobody is perfect. The fact that it took them some years to change it doesn't necessarily mean they were stubborn, perhaps they were redesigning it? Also, I don't think you know how thing works in very large company (very very differently than in large companies, that in turn are very very different from how they work on medium sized companies, and so on and so on), expecting them to react to feedback and create a new product in a matter of a year or two it's just ridiculous.
Hard drive support:
Products evolve in time. That for a year or two some people asked for external hard drive and got them a year later than they wanted, it doesn't mean Apple execs didn't want external drive support or weren't working on it; thinking otherwise clearly shows bias, you are trying to determine the cause (you want it to be) from the outcome.
Butterfly keyboard:
They tried a new design, they tried to fix it, they weren't able to, they changed it. Again, your expectations are not realistic if you think they were being stubborn because it tooks more than you liked, given massive companies timings, dynamics and all.
Don't you see that your thesis are only based on the fact that you didn't get what you wanted IMMEDIATELY, an ignorance of how the industry, large organizations and the craft actually work and totally unrealistic expectations about time to market of this kind of product?
I will leave you with an example:
Year 1: Mac Pro launch betting on dual video cards setup that at the moment looks like the future.
Year 2: The industry eventually starts to go on a different direction with single more powerful cards
Year 3: It's clear that the design bet didn't work, they
revaluate,
research and
start conceiving a different design (digression: do you really think that after investing tens or hundred of millions in designing, building, marketing, distribution on a product you just drop it after 12 months?).
Year: 4 They keep designing and testing the new product (again: do you really think that designing a computer system it's easy? That you don't make any mistake, you never have to drop part of you plans, get back to the drawing board and son?) and they release the new Mac Pro.
Curious: how would you have done it faster than this?
