Do you have a source that they refused any ads at all? There's a difference between having a few tasteful ones and overloading it like it currently is.
> Instagram only became sustainable under Facebook.
That's an incredible leap to say IG couldn't develop their own ad network as a stand alone company. Hire a few people away from Google with options in a growing company the same way FB did.
If IG didn't sell they would have fully killed Facebook's relevancy by now.
> I'd concluded that Apple didn't really think much of laptops anymore, and had simply moved on to caring more about other form factors: it seemed a logical conclusion if one assumed that people at Apple were in fact competent.
Counterpoint, I love the new keyboards and hate using anything else. Amazing how far people go in assuming their opinion is correct, and then just keep going from there.