The first smartphone I got was the iPhone 3G and I've been with Apple ever since, with the exception of one brief period of 6 months when I used the Galaxy S3. I was tempted to try out a different device, the Galaxy had a bigger screen, expandable storage and all that, so I thought I'd try it. I didn't enjoy that phone and I snapped when the phone burned through the SD card I had in it. It was only music, but still, it could have been important data and I realized I had bought an unreliable phone, sold it and got an iPhone 5.
It was then that it became clear to me that many of the features Android offers are just gimmicks, and even those that are not gimmicks are often poorly implemented so you can't have confidence in your device. My wife uses Galaxy phones (S+, S3, S6 and now the S10+) so I know what they are like and I don't plan on using a Samsung device anytime soon.
The experience Apple provides is just better. It's more polished, smoother, more reliable and the iPhones beat all other phones for longevity. I switched from the iPhone 5 to the 6 because the 6 was a birthday present and my dad still uses my old iPhone 5 to this day. I switched from the iPhone 6 to the XR because I had been using the 6 for four years and I wanted to try out the new form factor, and also because I wanted a faster phone. Again, the iPhone 6 still works fine and my dad uses it as his work phone, no problems. By contrast, every time my wife switched to a newer Galaxy model was because the old one wasn't working properly (faulty motherboard, bad battery, malfunctioning camera, sluggish performance, not getting enough charge, rebooting randomly...). Big difference.
Speaking of the Galaxy line-up and the smoothness and polish of iOS, one difference I noticed which I think perfectly represents the differences between iPhone and pretty much any other device out there. So I like raise to wake on my XR and I think it works almost perfectly - 99% of the time the screen will light up when I want it to, the software is great at recognizing my movements. By comparison, I tried the raise to wake on my wife's new Galaxy S10+ and it just doesn't work well. When I pick up the phone normally, the screen doesn't turn on so I have to emphasize the lift for the phone to recognize it's been picked up and I want to see the screen. This is a small thing, a feature not everyone will use, but it's one of those things that clearly show you the difference between Apple and the rest. Others just shove as many features as they can into a device and say what a great bang for the buck that is, but it really isn't - many of those features are gimmicks or simply half-baked and unreliable. When Apple implements a feature, it's usually implemented properly. Not that Apple doesn't have shortcomings in their products, but they also don't release phones that catch fire.
So the main reasons why I use Apple are quality, reliability, consistency and longevity. Being in the ecosystem is a consequence of the reasons I use Apple, it's not THE reason.
