I use an Apple phone and laptop along with a Debian server and distro hopping laptop.

The first benefit I get is social integration—I’m not looking for FOSS alternatives to some things because the mainstream source definitely runs on it (Adobe products primarily). Never underestimate the social utility of those blue bubbles—it tells a certain brand of person that you are part of their herd, and my family heavily falls into that group. Nobody ever bats an eye at my MacBook Air in public—people don’t see me for the 1337 hackerman that I am inside, and I like it that way sometimes.

The second benefit is hardware support. Say what you will about the price of Apple Care, but knowing I can walk in to an Apple Store and walk out with a replacement is extremely useful in a pinch.

Finally, I like the feel and look of their products, and there is a convenience in their ecosystem. You know what you’re getting with Apple, and it all works together out of the box. I could recreate their built in features with FOSS alternatives, but I simply don’t have to because it is already designed to work.

With Apple you pay a lot up front and then nothing for the software over time—that is an easy budgeting calculation for me. I don’t have to worry about what card I choose or niche incompatibility, Apple already took care of that.

I’ve flirted with fully transitioning to Linux many times, but I have always found a reason to keep one mainstream OS around, and Windows sucks. MacOS is a happy medium for power users who are comfortable with it and enjoy the UNIX family.

In addition to the things everyone else has brought up:

• MacPorts gives you everything on any BSD or Linux machine, on your Mac.
• iTerm2 is the best terminal on any platform, there’s amazing capabilities in it. You didn’t know your terminal was so inadequate!
• AppleScript, Automator, and every programming language on Mac; Shortcuts, Pythonista, LispPad, & Hotpaw BASIC on iOS; make automation of the system and programming little tools incredibly easy. Everything is accessible to the power user, it’s not like Linux where some GUI features are scriptable, and others you’ll be writing a C++ program to reach some API because it’s not exposed to anything.

As the old ad says (which got me to buy in): Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null

I’m a bit confused, OS upgrades are free… I’ve been back and forth between iOS and Android a few times, I avoid lock-in to either ecosystem by using 3rd party cloud services like Bitwarden, Signal, Dropbox free (10GB), etc. I can switch over in half an hour. Most recently they started supporting the open standard Matter so they can use same smart home things as Google or Home Assistant.

As for “bloat”, well there’s a few apps I don’t use, most can be uninstalled, if not it only takes up a bit of disk space, not RAM/CPU so they don’t impact performance and I keep my phones for many years. Right now I got an iPhone 13, it runs like new, it’ll last for a long time.

Are we upset about what they call support staff? All companies do weird marketing stuff, it matters not.

I wanted to have an easier time when talking to girls and honestly I think it helped a bit

A friend who’s extremely technically competent told me he’s happy to have someone else be the sysadmin for his phone, and finds Apple more trustworthy than Google in that role.

iPhone/ipad user here. I also have managed 1000’s of mobile devices for over a decade.

I’ve never paid for an OS upgrade.

Apple supports devices longer than most large android OEMs.

Not much bloatware that I can think of.

Yes, software built for one OS doesn’t usually go to another OS without much issue. If it does it’s because it’s a PWA. Also, I have money.

Who cares what they call their staff?

Flat/Philips head screws are the worst. Nearly anything else is better. Years of working with HP/Compaq, Dell, BlackBerry,super micro,Nortel, Cisco, Ford, Mitsubishi, bmw, Suzuki, Yamaha equipment has made me realize that.

I’ve never bought an apple product in my life, but even my android phone drives me nuts at times…

I used Android phones since the G1 and decided to give it a punt after a few phones in a row developed problems less than 2 years old. Well it turns out Apple devices just work and keep on working so I now have a few.

Still don’t want a Mac though.

I’ve never used an Android that felt like it was out of beta testing yet and they stopped making Windows phones and BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?). I only used my phone for texting and email and my significant other talked me into an expensive-ass iPhone 8 and I’ve just kinda kept going with them. I have an 8 and a 12 and I plan on using the 12 until it falls apart and then go back to the 8 until that one dies too. If e-ink phones aren’t a thing by that time I’ll get a dumb phone and separate device for Authenticator passcodes.

As for why - I don’t need the latest and greatest features on my phone. It may be an old way of thinking but I’d rather use a computer and dumb phone over a smart phone on its own.

I wish all windows users a very 65 decibel fan noise on opening 3rd chrome tab.

This message brought to you by ARM gang.

I think a lot of folks hate Windows and are intimidated by, or don’t want to be inconvenienced by Linux.

I have an iPhone, MacBook, and run Linux on a desktop pc. Only thing I have to add is that on iOS the only apps you can’t remove is phone, messages, settings, App Store, and safari which I wouldn’t consider bloatware. On macos I think u can remove pretty much anything using workarounds. Rn apples arm laptops are some of the most efficient on the market, iPads are pretty good tablets, and iPhones work great with both of those products.

You seem to be very enthusiastic about criticizing apple.

I just own an iPhone so I don’t think I can engage with you with all these critiques. I bought it because at that point in time, it was cheaper than a Samsung. I had concerns about privacy, and it seemed like apple had better control of their App Store and there was less crapware there.

I had tried a custom android rom before this (it must have been around 2013, cyanogenmod) but it was too early in development maybe, and it sucked. It might have been the phone I installed it on. At any rate, I gave up on custom roms for a bit.

My job uses iPhones for an industry specific dispatch software that does not use the cellular network. So I am glad Im familiar with iPhone software, though I wouldn’t have bought one just for this reason. They were using iPods for the software before that, but the iPods didn’t have replaceable batteries and had to be disposed of (which is a shame, they were much smaller)

My iphone is 5-6 years old now, I’ll buy something else when I have to. Probably something I can try lineageOS or whatever the new rom is.

I used to use a corer/slicer combo, but it was still just faster and easier to do the quarter and trim method.

At this point I’m just one more person on the pile but:

I used Android for years because I like open stuff, but iPhones are just straight-up better. There’s all kinds of weird broken stuff on Androids, things that don’t quite work or where the interface separating two parts of the device is a little awkward… my iPhone just does what it’s supposed to do. It’s hard to explain but there’s just a clear difference in the quality level of the software. They seem like they polished it until it was genuinely done, as opposed to just shipping the thing and moving on with something else. Also the photos are better (same thing – they clearly make it a priority). Also the security is much better, weirdly enough. I had to fight with the iPhone for quite a while trying to get a dashcam app, until I finally realized that the issue was that there was absolutely no way for an app to access the camera if it wasn’t the foreground app with the camera light on. Android? Fuckin’-a Mr. App you can watch this person sleeping, just make sure you ask about it when you’re first installed (and then refuse to install if the person says no).

Etc etc.

MacOS computers are pretty similar; good hardware, software isn’t perfect but mostly solid, BSD backend with lots of solid tooling. They just generally are high-quality and reliable.

I think mostly the reason is, they have this weird cultish following that means they can charge a high price for their stuff and don’t face constant pressure to make it a little crappier in hopefully-they-won’t-notice ways to save a buck. So, you pay a little premium but what you get is good.