Undesign knows what he's talking about, man. I think you're correct that Apple tries to make great products, but they don't make great products to "benefit the user" or whatever. They make them because if they can tell people they make consistently good products and be believed, people will buy them. If that perception spreads, it strengthens Apple's brand, and Apple's brand is more powerful than any of their competitors by a mile.
Here's an example. I've had two Windows desktops and one Windows laptop in my life, and all of them were terrible computers. They were slow, the laptop's battery life was atrocious (avoid Toshiba Satellites like the plague, by the way), and they certainly weren't particularly attractive devices (not that that matters much, but it's better for a device to be pretty than ugly, right?) The laptop, the last computer I had, was running Windows Vista, and that's what did it for me. I was sick of Microsoft. Since then, I've heard decent things about Windows 7 and have had generally good experiences using it myself on other people's computers, but it still had an exorbitant price, and Windows 8 is... well... Windows 8. A friend of mine who has zero interest in Apple products despises Windows 8, which they installed on all of the computers in the College of Business and ended up just confusing a bunch of their students and teachers. I think Microsoft's done a lot of stupid stuff with Xbox and Office too, which doesn't improve my perception of them.
Meanwhile, I've had several iPods, two iPhones, an iPad, an Apple TV, and a MacBook. Two of the iPods died on me (one was definitely my fault, though), but on the whole I've had an excellent experience with Apple products. I find iCloud incredibly useful, I think the organization of their products makes more sense, and I'm a college student and writer, both of which are big markets for Apple (education and creative, the former of which I got an education discount for and the latter of which means I get a bunch of great software that's directed at me).
So when I'm in the market for a new computer, am I going to buy a Windows computer? No. Is that because Apple cares about me? No, it's because they make a product that I suspect is more likely to suit my needs and work the way I want it to. It's branding and good business, it's not that Apple has a bigger heart than Microsoft. Some people would rather spend $500 on a laptop than $1000 and have it die on them in a year, but I'd rather spend the extra cash and have a better product that'll last me awhile.
If other companies understood that there's more to branding than commercials about how bad the other guy's product is (Samsung) or the fact that your tablet and keyboard click together (Microsoft), maybe they'd outsell their competition more.
