Well, for starters, I agree with almost everything you said. Apple has had its fair share of products – in fact, most of their lineup – that weren't exactly the first in their respective categories, but they were either extremely perfected from the get-go (the iPod, the AirPods and even the HomePod with it's incomplete software at launch), or revolutionary enough to keep people interested in them (the iPhone, the Apple Watch…).
These last two are a typical case of deeply-flawed, yet delightful first-gen Apple products; people seem to forget the iPhone 2G's software didn't even feature an App Store or (*gasp*) copy and paste, and Apple was heavily chastised for those ommissions. As for the Apple Watch, retroactively called Series 0, I should know about its shortcomings because I own one. I love it to bits for the convenience it provides as an actual watch, notification relay thingy and occasional timer, but third-party apps feel like utter crap, and the battery life only suits me because I've been on a lazy streak ever since I bought it; I recently put it through its paces during a ski trip, and every single day the poor thing had to be recharged back at the hotel if I still wanted to use it during the evening.
But, you see, other companies also produced crappy firsts, for years on end. Microsoft and its abominable Windows Mobile (not Windows Phone, that was actually a nice system, which I'd have very much preferred to see as a standard instead of Android) comes to mind, but one thing those devices didn't do was spontaneously combust or break after a week. Samsung didn't use to be like this, either, and they had already started experimenting with a lot of technologies a few years prior (in fact, many of the technical innovations Apple makes use of at the component level, especially the screens, do come from Samsung). So, something definitely changed inside of that company, mostly because of Apple and other competitors; they really lost their shame and let themselves go on QA.
One thing did similarly change inside of Apple: they became more cavalier when it comes to pre-announcements. It did start with the iPhone, during Steve's tenure, and the same happening with the Apple Watch was also understandable, as there was no Osborne Effect to be had with either launch; but the others were really a case of Apple having waited out (or dragged on with their R&D) a bit too long, then pre-announcing stuff also way too early, and feeling the need to grab their market's attention and do some “Osborning” to their competitors' products. It did feel a little desperate and ”me-too” (in its old, pre-#metoo meaning), and not just “look at these perfected products we came up with”.
The AirPower fiasco is probably the most telling example of that (Apple was super late in the wireless charging game, to the point they released a Qi-compliant phone without the first-party charger to go with it; it's patently ridiculous), but it also revealed another worrying trend (albeit one with a relatively minor impact, as you'll soon see): they are also getting more cavalier with their innovation on secondary product lines. The only product line Apple absolutely can't fail at is the iPhone; whether you like it or not, they are the “iPhone company”, and if they have one misstep, they're doomed (the fact that they don't do like other companies and launch a metric ton of different models each year – and no, three new phones is not much – also raises the stakes much higher). But when it comes to accessories and the Mac, they don't really give a damn. I can picture this conversation going somewhere at Apple Park: “AirPower's reliability is unknown at this time? Screw it, it's just an accessory and it's cool so let's pre-announce it”. And maybe if Steve was still around, but definitely if the iPhone didn't even exist, you can bet those stupid butterfly keyboards would've been scrapped already.
The thing is: Apple is now so huge that a multi-million fiasco can feel like peanuts to them, and people will similarly either overlook it, or put up with it for a few years (I do believe they'll eventually fix the keyboard-gate, the flex-gate, etc). Back during Steve's days, not that long after the company had been on the brink of bankruptcy, any fiasco like that would've severely damaged the company's reputation. To this day, the “beleaguered” spectrum still prevails, albeit in a bit of a dissimulated fashion. Apple has always been a quirky company, and some people had wanted it to fail from its very inception, but the dark ages of the '90s provided them with the perfect fodder to peddle the “beleaguered” narrative and it sort of became a meme that was heavily circulated until a bit after Steve's passing. I predict it will take another decade until people and reporters get completely used to Apple being a successful company and stop predicting its demise at every juncture, much like they don't with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Samsung et al.