Oh definitely. The Mac lost because it was a closed platform in an era of open platforms where that open ecosystem was constantly driving up performance and capability while crushing prices.

The modern Mac is actually more open than the classic Mac because it's a BSD system. The UI is proprietary but the underlying OS is pretty commodity and loads of software that runs on things like Linux runs on it with little or no modification.

It was really a pretty magical time. I was a kid and a teen then and it seemed like the PC was this wide open field of limitless permission-free innovation. New software, new hardware, new capabilities were constantly being introduced and you didn't need an "entitlement" in an App Store or any of that nonsense. Nothing is really like that today except maybe the open source world, and even that kind of feels like a tar pit. There's still an open PC ecosystem but it's smaller and less dynamic.

Of course I also understand what killed it. It wasn't just cloud/SaaS or mobile. It was also the fact that we now operate in a "dark forest" war zone environment where we all have to navigate a sea of malware and exploitive surveillance-driven borderline-malware. It's hard enough for knowledgeable people but for end users downloading software is terrifying. It's like going to the worst neighborhood in the city in the middle of the night and walking around among living-dead drug addicts asking people if they know where to find something.

It wasn't an era of open platforms, as the PC was the exception, not the rule.