Before the iPhone, because I never liked the Mac UI with the bar at the top and the apps menu over there and I didn't need an iPod.
After the iPhone, a personal boycott because of the walled garden. It was not immediately clear what the endgame would be but it was pretty clear that this level of control by a single corporation on a large part of the world is a bad thing.
Some of them do! Go check out a Huawei store, or, to a lesser degree, a Samsung one.
It's true that it might not apply to all their products, because they also cater to people without 6-figure USD equivalent incomes, but you can buy the expensive stuff.
When? When Apple products will stop being perceived as something better than competition. They somehow created the image that they are some sort of luxury, but if that was ever an actual case its long gone. Don't take me wrong, its a fine long term marketing performance and I respect them for it, but lets be a bit more technical and less emotional here.
Some phones are way more expensive than A top line, have massive cameras, better screens, batteries (I mean real life, one of failures on A side for first decade), better integration with rest of the electronic world (like streaming fullhd tv from phone to any TV I saw so far, or having mouse&keyboard desktop on big screen via single USB-C cable out of box, or very good pen within the phone - image editing goes to another level). Plus you have much bigger variety, anything from 50$. And they are open, not unimportant aspect not only for many HN users.
That doesn't mean they do bad products, in contrary. But emotions aside, its now just another set of products with personally weird philosophy, even weirder emotional fanbase and just a much more closed ecosystem.
I am not a fanboy, but I do use Apple products. They are pretty excellent, and every feature you stated is available within their ecosystem, and more. Their stuff is expensive but it works pretty well together and I've had nearly no issues. The physical quality is at least worth the price I paid for my Apple stuff. The closed ecosystem is semi-annoying to me as a developer but it really doesn't stop me from doing everything I want to.
tl;dr: Some people are just happy with Apple products; we're not cult members and saying that is insulting, frankly.
Only if you take it that way. But when your smartphone is from Apple, along with you laptop, desktop, monitor, mouse, keyboard, calendar, notes, earpods, with a bevy of charging infrastructure to support that, it's not hard to see that you don't have to squint real hard to see it that way. There were some that went as far as to try and nominate Steve Jobs as president.
What about those who have Google phones, run Chrome on everything, have those Google audio pods, Google branded email, Google TVs, etc?
Some people are fanboys of Linux products, and all their shit runs Linux or some other Unix or BSD (more fanboys than for Apple, probably).
I even know a few people who just LOVE Microsoft and their products.
It's fun to make fun of Apple people, I know because I do that too, but in reality the reason people like me own all that stuff is because it "just works together" and I don't have to fiddle with a bunch of random brand stuff to get it to work together, plus I have had a bad experience with Google so I won't use their products. If I hadn't had a bad experience with Google, I may have everything Google branded right now so it "just works together" too.
My wife has consistently bad experience with iphone, namely 13 mini. Just a badly designed product from her perspective, doesn't integrate well with anything via open standards that others implement effortlessly. She is not a techie, so theoretically an ideal customer, but no she still hates it with passion and next phone will be something-android. Personal anecdotes are sort of meaningless here, aren't they. But apple fans like you seldom disappoint, you seem to take my post personally, not sure why.
I don't get why you immediately try to move discussion into extremes, maybe your style but not most of folks - either you have everything X, or everything Y. Sort of proving exactly my point. You don't even try to understand my argument - I can integrate anything, from any manufacturer. Plug in DELL monitor via usb-c, just works, immediately. Connect Sennheiser earplugs (since airpods pro sounds quality leaves a lot to be desired), bam and flacs flow via aptx-hd seamlessly. I could go on and on.
Apple has very tiny offer to cater to all our needs and budgets. These days, even if price is not the problem, often they don't offer the best on the market. So smart thing is to have a diverse set, the opposite of locked-down you describe. People are beginning to be fed up with that since apple is showing its true colors, and this topic and discussion is exactly about it.
The first amendment gives you the right to say what you want free of us government interference but doesn’t say anything about people thinking you’re an asshole because you repeat the oldest joke in technology.
speak for yourself I've had two apple products, ever, an Ipod touch 4 (trash) and an ipod nano 7th gen, the nano was good but for music playback, I'd never get an iphone, I'm not down to lock myself down to their terrible ecosystem
They were screwed by Microsoft in the past. And now they're the ones screwing every single small and mid-sized software shop everywhere.
When will we stop buying their products?