Yes, because Apple Watch has changed the way people tell the time, Beats headphones have changed the way people listen to music, iCloud made Google, MS, Dropbox etc. give up and go home, the original MacBook Air wasn't totally re-designed before it was a success and people stopped moaning about the new MBP as soon as they'd actually tried one... Not.
Trouble is, "Critics were wrong about the iPod in 2001 therefore they're wrong about X in 2019" is a fallacy that crops up all too often on this site. Sure, there are always some "Apple is doomed now - sack Tim Cook" type trolls who make hyperbolic claims, but there are also valid criticism that gets hand-waved away "because iPod/original iMac". Even where the products/decisions you list have been modest successes, the only one that comes close to original-iMac/iPod/iPhone in terms of innovation and impact is the iPad (...which was 'just a giant iPod Touch': true, but not a problem).
The MB Air arguably invented the "ultrabook" form-factor (if you pretend that the Sony Vaio range never existed) but the "classic" version was the 2010 model - a substantially revised design that addressed many of the original criticism such as connectivity and - not least - price.
The other different thing about the iPod was that it was an entirely new product for Apple - it wasn't like (say) Sony saying "We're dropping the cassette Walkman overnight in favour of a digital player, so tough luck if you want to go on playing your mix tapes after your current Walkman wears out". The iPod could afford to take a risk - it wasn't taking people's Macs away. The original iMac was effectively a from-scratch product line, too (anyway, the whole range was a dumpster fire when Jobs took over, esp. the 'consumer' desktops) designed for the internet era - if you weren't ready for all-USB and no floppy, the G3 tower was available and hugely expandable. Its also worth remembering that although everybody moaned in 2012 when the rMBPs dropped Ethernet, Firewire and spinning rust the classic models were not only available, but got significant upgrades at the same time so nobody got left in the lurch.
What has been happening recently is that product lines have been left to stagnate for years (Mac Pro, Mac Mini - even the rMBP went 18 months or so without a significant update) then suddenly whisked away and replace with radical "reinventions" (and exciting new higher prices) leaving existing customers with nowhere to go. If you didn't like the iPod, you didn't have to buy one... if you were a Mac laptop user and didn't like the 2016 MacBook Pro - there weren't even any second hand options with CPUs less than 2 generations behind...
Most of the people complaining about the Mac Pro aren't complaining about the 28 core quad-GPU monster that may (or may not) be exactly what Pixar want - they're complaining about Apple no longer offering a ~$3000 headless Mac option at all.
