Sure, there were electric cars. But if I remember correctly, Tesla was the first to deliver the whole next-gen package with an every day, everywhere car, plus charging stations plus the whole automation. If you wanted that, there was no way around Tesla for quite a while.
Teslas were the “best”, as in the only option for what they did. They were never the “best”, as in better than existing products for what they did.
Being first to market for such a long time was an incredible feat and it speaks volumes that their position isn’t much, much stronger at the end of it.
When I installed Kinoite to start using Linux as my primary daily driver, the first thing I did was setting up Ansible, creating a new playbook and all Linux configurations I made from that point on, are only ever done through that playbook, which is backed up in my Forgejo instance. One command and everything is being set up exactly the way I want. It feels extremely liberating.
Ansible playbook is perfect for this. All your configuration is repeatable, whether on a running system or a new one. Plus you can start with a completely fresh newest version image and apply from there, instead of starting from a soon-to-be outdated custom image.