You don't sound like you're talking from a consumer point of view with that opinion to be fair, you sound like you're justifying it because it is financially beneficial to you and your shares.
I don't own any Apple shares. Never have, so I have zero vested interest in how well Apple does financially. My interest is solely in using what I think I know and understand about Apple over the years to try and explain why they do the things they do, and just how it is that they have continued to become so financially successful in the face of conventional wisdom.
It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of complaining how Apple seems to be overcharging us for every little thing and how things would be so much better if only their ram / storage upgrades were cheaper, their pro model was actually their base model (and priced accordingly as well), just how everything was cheaper in general. But then I feel it just becomes an echo chamber, where Apple is treated as any other company, and its unique attributes are not allowed to speak for itself or recognise how Apple is able to set itself apart from the competition.
For example, cheaper, better-specced android handsets don't seem to be doing so well on the market. And maybe the issue is that specs are just specs, and is not necessarily a guarantee of how well a device actually performs. Is the software actually optimised to take advantage of that third camera, or is just there to not appear inferior to other competing android handsets?
In contrast, I will argue that because Apple has its own ecosystem and is the only company that uses iOS, they don't have to go down the same "race to the bottom" as the rest of the competition. This frees them to focus on what really matters - the end user experience. For example, Apple doesn't need to include 12 gb of ram in an iPhone just because a Samsung phone has it. They can include 4 or 6 gb, knowing that software optimisation will handle the rest, and consumers are not going to compare the amount of ram an iPhone has to a Samsung phone the way they might between a Samsung and an Oppo phone. And I am still assured 5 years of software updates minimum.
We have seen this play out numerous times in the past. The A7 chip in the iPhone 5s focused on 2 faster cores over the Snapdragon's 4 slower ones (or heck, even the Exynos' 8 cores), which allowed for better performance and power efficiency. For the longest time, Apple prioritised larger camera pixels over more megapixels (their cameras still max out at 12mp). Even today, iPhones sport just 1 form of biometric authentication (either touch or Face ID, backed by Secure Enclave, each of which remains the gold standard) compared to android phones having multiple options, all of which seem to suffer from varying lack of security. The last one is particularly telling - am I better off with 4 insecure ways of unlocking my phone, or 1 extremely secure method?
I will also argue that Apple does innovate, and perhaps it is us who need to expand our definition of just what meaningful innovation entails. Take their fall / crash detection, satellite relay and ECG features for example. We have already seen multiple news reports of how they have saved lives, and they will continue to save lives in the future. It also belies the hardware / software integration and the infrastructure that goes into making these seemingly innocuous features work, which is something android OEMs simply lack the resources to do, much less do properly.
I hear you on your wanting a third camera on your iPhone without having to spring for the costlier pro model, but also encourage you to look beyond such superficial comparisons.
How does your explanation/defence of Apple's monetary strategy relate to you or I though? We all know they are a business and only interested in making immense amounts of money but why can't we complain that we feel short changed by incremental innovations and rising retails costs? I don't know of any other brand on earth where a company can offer small updates, but survive on their brand strength and have so many people celebrate them because they are making so much money. It seems alien to me, and I like to make sure I am getting the most for my money as a consumer.
I guess for me, it goes back to the hackneyed adage of "price vs value".
Apple's ecosystem is designed around people that easily spend money. It's a common trope around here that Apple gear is overpriced (which I disagree with) but given that, and their financials which are unlike any other comparable company, you can only conclude that Apple buyers spend money - a lot of it.
I'm end-to-end Apple gear. A lot of the people around me are as well. I don't want to dick around with cobbling some system together, deal with any more accounts than I already have (200+ passwords in my 1Password - welcome to adulthood), or deal with security issues. I work hard (or so I like to think) and make decent money, and at this point in my life, I just want things to be easy more than I want them to be cheap.
I am Apple's target market. Is Apple Music lower quality or more expensive? I literally don't care. I just want to be able to pull up a song on my watch and stream it to my airpods no matter where I am. That's it. I'll pay more for it. I don't have to install an app. It's available on my Apple TV. I can airplay it to damn near everything.
This is what Apple does. They rarely beat competitors on the bullet list, but when it comes to "look at your phone and all your stuff is unlocked", they're unbeatable. They play the system integration game better than anyone else, and if it costs a few bucks more, I'm happy to pay it, because while my Apple devices do tend to cost more upfront, my experience is that they quickly pay for themselves in the form of fewer problems and greater productivity overall.
That's what I am paying for at the end of the day. Not specs, but a solution that just works. And if Apple is able to offer me a better solution despite having worse specs on paper, then so be it.
