Before that self driving cars, before that “Big data”, before that 3D printing, before that internet TV, before that “cloud computing”, before that web 2.0, before that WAP maybe, internet in general?
Some of those things did turn out to be game changers, others not at all or not so much. It’s hard to predict the future.
They’re right though. Top of the line software for certain domains (CAD, photoshop) just doesn’t exist for Linux. As much as I would want it to be.