This is an interesting point. Besides making a few $1 purchases of songs or podcasts with iTunes (which I haven't done since 2018), I've never been an Apple customer. It hasn't taken any special effort to avoid them, either. But I'm struck by two things in Apple's favor:
(1) I keep hearing fantastic things about their new M1 processors and laptops, and it actually has me slightly interested in Apple for the first time in my life, so that's impressive.
(2) Just the extreme loyalty among people who are Apple customers.
Both 1) and 2) are testaments to the effectiveness of Apple's marketing/propaganda, which has historically been their strength. Steve Jobs was a marketing genius.
The M1 may be a nice processor, but do people actually need a nicer processor? Before the M1, were iPhone users really going "gee I really could use more cores"?
Sure, faster tech is always better, but I'm of the position that the M1 craze is >95% marketing propaganda and <5% genuine "this is a qualitative and necessary improvement to my user experience".
Apple enthusiasts definitely want to believe that Apple is constantly innovating and ahead of the game. And there are a lot of them, notably on HN.
(1) I keep hearing fantastic things about their new M1 processors and laptops, and it actually has me slightly interested in Apple for the first time in my life, so that's impressive.
(2) Just the extreme loyalty among people who are Apple customers.