Whenever I hear somebody moving to a Macbook and make any sort of complaint onkine, lots of people unhelpfully tell you to buy a $1000+ iPhone and that will solve all your problems, or when an Android user is "switching to iPhone", a similar thing happens with "just use a Mac". Why the hell do you need to purchase all the expensive devices to just use one?
Most of the time, using an iPhone, Mac, etc., does not "just work". Maybe the UI is simply not very usable (not just Liquid Glass, see MacOS's terrible implementation of a settings app, iOS not having an option to combine the quick settings and notifications), third-party devices (headphones, chargers, tablets, etc.) simply do not work well (no, "get the iDevice" is not helpful!), iOS having the most ass file management that may as well not exist, all the different bugs poking around everywhere (through my own experiences with iOS* and my friend's with MacOS), etc. "Give more money to Apple to fix it" is not good advice and does not help to solve anything.
Why is it that, when Apple has inherently worse hardware, everybody seems to put up with it? On their Macs, you have 60 Hz LCD displays on a $1000+ laptop, no good ports selection unless you spend thousands more, ridiculously priced memory and storage upgrades that would be a death sentence to any other company, very shallow key travel that feels terrible to type on compared to other options, etc. As for their iPads, you have similarly not so great displays on a relatively high end tablet unless you spend thousands on a tablet with an uber-fancy M5 chip (why would anyone need that???), a keyboard case that is so expensive despite feeling like a cheap membrane keyboard you got on Aliexpress and being so top-heavy, etc. Who in their right mind would purchase a $550 set of headphones made of ridiculously heavy metal, with uncomfortable cushions, terrible battery life, mid ANC, and several year old innards?
How has Apple manipulated so many people with their marketing? ~~I don't really see anything quite like it in other product segments.~~ What is the secret apple sauce?
*note that I currently run an Android phone, but I have my issues with them too that I won't get into. My particular device is very bloated and incredibly annoying to work with sometimes, but it's what I've got. On my laptop I happily run Linux, where the device simply listens to me which is a nice change of pace
edit: Actually, no, I think something similar occurs with Nintendo (in video games) and Disney (for films)
As someone who prefers linux but is relegated to Windows, my wife is strictly an Apple person and I have to say I'm impressed with them.
She doesn't use a laptop a lot but she has some upcoming certifications to renew and so she brought out her 2015 macbook pro. It was outdated and had no recent OS updates available. However after a simple manual installation of a few year newer OS it runs just fine. At one point we considered buying her a new laptop this time. While looking at new laptops I told her we could get a cheaper Windows one that would be ok for a few years or another, slightly more expensive macbook that would last another 10. I don't think we'll need to buy a new one though as her 2015 seems ok to run at least until 2028 and that's only because of available OS upgrades.
Our kids were also using her iPad 2 when they were younger from 2011 and it ran fine until 2022 and again, no hardware issues, just old performance and lack of support.
But probably the biggest thing is when I put a pihole on my network. Almost EVERY device be it google, Samsung, Windows, LG, smartphones, printers, TVs, etc etc is CONSTANTLY pinging outside your network. To the tune of thousands of blocked attempts per day per device. Yet Apple products are constantly at the bottom of the blocked attempts list, closer to about 100 per device per day.
I used to be an Apple hater, but switched ~4 years ago for some of the reasons you've given here.
I handed my 2012 fat macbook pro down to my mom. Still kicking with 16 gigs of RAM since I upgraded it when I still had it. I myself got it for like a hundred or two hundred euros. It's running on a newer MacOS than it officially supports with opencore. Yes, Linux will support devices even longer, but how many laptops have this kind of hardware longevity? Mostly just Thinkpads, but not all generations of those either. And SOME generations of Elitebooks, but not most of them. Bit of a survivorship bias on this one though, some of the 2010-2012 15" models had different forms of graphics chip failure, mine was 13".
Android landscape is changing, but when I switched to iOS, you could get, for the same price, 3 years of Android updates for a flagship phone vs ~5-7 for iOS. But if you have an iPhone 8, you still got security updates in May despite not having had a new major version since 2022. That model is turning 9 this year.
Android runs on non-Google devices too, so Google needs to make money off those by doing something other than selling hardware. iOS only runs on Apple devices, they've already made their money off each device. Not saying they're absolute privacy champions, but they have a lot more to lose in terms of reputation if they were doing extensive spying on you 24/7.
This all without even getting into the Apple Silicon chips. M1 when I had it was ridiculously fast and power efficient already.