I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.
I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:
Advantages
Long iOS support. Typically you can expect an iPhone to be supported for 5-7 years, which is well above the average in the industry.
No bloatware or adverts on the iPhone
Better privacy than Google Android/Microsoft Windows
High-end hardware, e.g. M1 chip in MacBooks.
User friendly design. Nice user experience.
Disadvantages
Overpriced. Seriously all Apple products are more expensive than the competition.
Anti-consumer business practices that influence the industry. They normalised removing the headphone jack and using non-removable batteries, which other manufacturers followed. Another anti-consumer practice is using their proprietary Lighting port, rather than USB (luckily the EU should be forcing them to adopt USB-C and removable batteries soon). Also, no SD card slot because they want you to use iCloud
Walled garden. No support for side-loading apps
Required to use iTunes to add/remove music to the iPhone, which is a problem if you use Linux (you’d have to use Wine to install the Windows version as a workaround)