The easy litmus test for me is this:
Map the decisions, products and service offerings onto any number of other brands and imagine how folks would react to those things
Would we here on this forum be defending Samsung if they were continuing to pump out "meh" quality/technology low refresh screens on many/most devices?
What about the 4x+ component upgrade ripoffs?
Could you imagine how we would excoriate and laugh at Samsung for doing that to their customers?
We could go all day with examples of Apple behavior that gets defended here, but would be absolutely derided if any other company were doing it
tldr -- the magic is long gone here and Apple is a hyper optimized money harvesting operation masquerading as a tech company
Tim "Cooked it"
The difference is that Apple sells an experience, while Samsung just sells parts. That is why Apple has mostly managed to avoid commoditisation (by creating an integrated user experience that customers are willing to pay a premium for). This is also the reason why Samsung doesn't enjoy the same pricing power that Apple does, because they don't vertically integrate the same way. Their phones run the same OS that many other Android phones do. The services are the same. The App Store is the same. The processor is the same. Maybe they do make the best screens and the fastest ram, and that in itself is not enough to meaningfully differentiate their wares from the rest of the competition (because they also sell their components to other companies).
Same thing with component upgrade pricing. The main reason why Samsung wouldn't get away with it is again, because they are selling commodity hardware with a ton of alternatives. There is nothing special about their laptops. They run windows, they run intel / AMD hardware, they use the same ram and SSD found everywhere else, and their trackpads are equally crap. There is nothing unique about their computers, so if they tried to charge more, people would simply shop elsewhere.
Conversely, Apple has again, managed to differentiate their PCs via apple silicon, macOS, MagSafe, a superior trackpad design, the integration with the rest of the ecosystem, Final Cut Pro and their own unique take on design (many laptops continue to be made of cheap plastic precisely because the OEMs lack pricing power). Can I find a cheaper laptop elsewhere? Sure. But if I specifically want a laptop that does all the aforementioned stuff in a manner that only Apple can (eg: the power efficiency that comes only with Apple Silicon or being able to edit videos via FCP), then I have no choice but the pay whatever Apple charges for additional ram and storage.
That to me is value. Not about who charges the absolute lowest for a product, but what I get out of it. Why I continue to use Apple products is because I know that while I pay more upfront, they quickly pay for themselves in the form of fewer problems and better productivity overall. You can tell me that Xiaomi sells an android tablet for half the price of an iPad, and I wouldn't be interested because I know the apps I use on iOS are largely not available on Android.
Maybe the only thing that has changed is that Apple understands better than anyone else where they stand in the entire value chain, and the pricing power they possess by virtue of delivering sufficiently differentiated user experiences made possible by the control they have over hardware, software and services, and they are not afraid to take advantage of this, and well-deservedly so.
It's not that the other companies don't do this out of the kindness of their hearts. It's that they can't, because they lack the differentiation that Apple has, by virtue of Apple being one of the very few companies actually willing to invest in having their own ecosystem to begin with.
A large part of the credit belongs to Tim Cook for not wavering from the path that Steve Jobs set, and for continuing to double down on that ecosystem moat, both for better and for worse. 😊
