So from what I have read the minimum time to flower is about two years and temperatures play a big role in that. You can force the flowering stage with the gasses that apples produce (see comment thread from one of my older posts) but in my case it took about 4.5+ years for mine to start to flower. After the process begins it supposedly takes about 6 months to have a fruit mature enough to harvest. I only stuck mine in succulent dirt and sort of bound it in a plastic pot that was slightly too small and also watered it like the rest of my succulents. I essentially stressed it a bit with drying it out between watering and then soaking it when I did water it to get it to reach deep for the water. Liquid succulent plant food occasionally. I am a dick to my plants but they seem to do decently and I have no idea if any of that is really a good way at all.

This is the first pic that I have of the plant that I took presumably because it was when it was actually showing growth. I’m guessing that this was a few months after I originally jammed it in this weird rectangle pot. This was from September 2020 so I probably bought the original pineapple sometime around the original covid lockdown. I guess it is closer to 4 years and a couple months old actually. I have only repotted it once since then and it has only ever been in that window.