I can answer this from the perspective of someone who, until 18 months ago, was all-in on Apple stuff.

The short answer is: As long as all of your devices are reasonably new and running the latest software, they’re all really good at talking to each other. Got a Mac and an iPad? Great, you can use Universal Control to operate the iPad using your Mac’s keyboard and mouse/trackpad. And that is a genuinely useful technology. Got something on your phone that you want to share with your partner on the TV? AirPlay it across to Apple TV. And so, and so forth.

Thing is, once you’re in that situation, you’re kinda stuck. If your Mac ages out of OS feature support, the only option is to replace the Mac if you want it to match the interconnectivity features of your new iPhone. So the answer in that situation is to buy a new Mac, one that supports the new features available in the newest OS. At that point, your options are to either shell out £1000+ on a new Mac, or completely change your workflow to one that can be achieved using open source or paid alternatives. The vast majority of people have neither the time nor the inclination to set up things like that, so they factor in the cost of a new computer, phone, or iPad every few years.

But Apple’s real secret sauce is that - and judging by the attitude you’re swinging around in your post, OP, you’re not going to like this - they make REALLY good hardware.

My primary computer is still a 15” M2 MacBook Air. That thing is super thin, super light, completely silent to use and has never given me a moment’s trouble in three years that I didn’t somehow inflict on myself. Using Crossover, I can play Windows games on it just as easily as using Steam/Proton on my Linux PC. I can play RDR2 on my fanless ARM laptop and get a perfectly fine 30fps when I’m not at home. The battery is three years old but still gives me a full day of use. Sure, it only has two ports, but both of them are Thunderbolt 4, and it has a dedicated Magsafe charging port.

I still have my 2011 MacBook Pro at home. It’s currently running Debian and is still rock solid. Looking a little rough around the edges these days, but still a perfectly usable computer - that’s 15 years old.

Apple has inherently worse hardware

This just isn’t true. At all. The build quality of their hardware is the best in the business.

Sure, they effectively paywall things like 120hz screens to the higher end Pro models, but they have enough market research telling them that people who buy a mid range iPhone don’t care about refresh rates, or even know what they are. Why spend money on a QoL upgrade that the user will never notice?

But yeah, their cost for memory and storage is downright criminal, and always has been. The only thing that’s changed in recent(ish) years is that now everything is soldered or proprietary, they’ve made it effectively impossible to upgrade it yourself at a far, far lower cost. And that’s incredibly shitty.

These days I’m primarily a Linux user. My work PC is Kubuntu, my home server Debian, my gaming PC CachyOS. None of those machines are as easy to use as my Macbook running macOS 15. They can (theoretically) achieve more, but in the 2 years I’ve been using Linux I’ve had to teach myself how to use a command line; something I very, very rarely needed to when I just used macOS alone.

But I reached a point where I got sick of Apple’s bullshit, their performative stance on progressive politics that didn’t match the image of Tim Apple licking Trump’s ring. So I traded in my iPhone 13 mini for a Pixel 9 onto which I immediately installed GrapheneOS. That one act completely broke the spell of the interconnected nature of Apple products for me. I still have an iPad mini, but 90% of its use is as a peripheral for my MacBook, where it does still have genuine utility.

So yeah, Apple don’t do anything particularly groundbreaking, they just make good hardware running software that’s mostly good and useful. People, it may shock you to learn, generally prefer to use devices that don’t need much tinkering to keep them running.