The shareholder aspect is a curious mental analomy that seems unique to Apple followers.
If you went on a BMW forum and said "wow Bugatti just made a great new transmission system" you wouldn't hear "yeah well BMW has more market share of executive cars so Bugatti is trash GTFO not interested go buy another car if you don't think BMW and their CEO are perfect".
That's because the analogy doesn't hold up at all (which is what makes effective analogies so hard to craft in real life), and your criticism often tends to be an oversimplification of the point we are trying to make overall.
The corollary to your example is if an Android user came onto this forum and went about dumping on the iPhone, citing how much more useful or powerful his Samsung phone was by listing off a whole laundry list of specs, and someone like myself retorted that the iPhone has more market share (not wrong, if we compared iPhone to sales of a specific Samsung phone) or profits overall.
I personally maintain that to each their own, but nonetheless, if it's a fight they want, it's a fight they will get.
Rather, the fallacy we are trying to correct is the assertion that just because Apple hasn't made the device *you* or some other poster on this forum wants or likes, doesn't mean that Apple has stopped innovating or that it is doomed. It just means that Apple hasn't made the phone with the features that you want. This doesn't mean that nobody wants or likes the version of the iPhone has put out, or that Apple will necessarily fail as a result.
The thing here is that innovation means different things to different people. Each of us wants / expects different things from Apple, and Apple clearly isn't able to cater to the needs of every single customer on earth. I can cite the Apple Watch and AirPods and the U1 chip as examples that Apple is still putting out innovative products and how they are setting the stage for further innovations down the road. Someone else will raise the fact that Apple hasn't put out a folding phone or that the latest iPhone lacks reverse wireless charging as a counterpoint.
And the observation is that for all the crap that was poured on products like the iPhone XR for its substandard display, or the AirPods for being expensive or "looking weird", consumers still love them (and bought them) by and large. Which makes me wonder why so much weight is being given to the words of a vocal minority here on this forum, especially when their sentiments don't seem representative of what's actually happening on the ground (which has been my observation thus far - the critics here seem to still be largely living in the 2000s Steve-Jobs-era bubble, while Apple, and the rest of the world, have moved on).
There is not going to be a single definitive authority who can give the final word on whether Apple is still innovating or not. Which leaves their profits as perhaps the next best indicator. Logic dictates that if people don't like Apple products, they won't buy them. And although iPhone sales have cooled due to a maturing premium market, Apple is still able to sell tens of millions of them every quarter, has introduced new measures like the annual upgrade programme to help push sales, and switched to services to offset falling margins and iPhone sales.
I get that talks of profits isn't sexy, and maybe it can be aggravating to see Apple doing well even as your MacBook Pro keyboard gets jammed and you have to get it replaced for the umpteenth time in a row. But has it occured to you or anyone else like yourself that perhaps the simple truth is that Apple is simply innovating in a direction that you don't like, and that they are no longer creating products that suit your needs, that perhaps it's simply time for you to move on, and that it's really nobody's fault in this scenario?
Because if I were to keep frequenting a French restaurant, only to keep complaining nonstop about how it doesn't serve Japanese cuisine, then past a certain point, I am the problem, not them.
