I sincerely appreciate the replies but can't respond to them all.
I was tempted not to reply, because I feel we'd be talking past each other. This article here illustrates my point better than I could, and coming across it prompted me to put aside my misgivings and reply at least this once:
https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html
Many of the arguments put forward in response to my initial post are probably fairly consistent inside a world where what capitalists call "competition" and "success" are the sole arbiters of right and wrong. I don't think that world has any place in any sane discussion on ethics. You could argue that ethical discussions are nonsense, then, I suppose, if you want, but you'd have to argue it and stand behind it.
In a world where ethics means something, Apple is a terrible company. They don't care about freedom, education, empowering people, software freedom, the right to repair, sharing, etc. Neither could they; they care about selling products, cutting costs, dominating their competitors, and so on. They're as cut-throat and ruthless and relentless as any company their size must be.
They're good at advertising and making well-integrated, pretty prisons.
And again, just to be clear, I've made no comment here or in the OP about whether their products work, or are powerful, or about whether it's easy to get your granny set-up on them. These things are beside the point.
I'm not playing the blame-game either, you can all buy/not buy whatever you want. I genuinely was interested to hear how technically literate people who are aware of things like the already ongoing climate collapse can keep buying new products from megacorporations producing tons of new fast-gadgets every year.
What is the justification? What I'm mostly hearing is: we like the gadgets, they work well, it's real nice not having to explain anything to Grandma, and we couldn't care less or at least would much prefer to ignore the obvious ethical issues of supporting massive, wasteful, anti-competitive monopoly-like structures.
It's a harder argument to make, but for me personally the worst thing Apple (and Microsoft, etc etc) have probably done over the longer term is disempower people. They've turned all these things - email, browsers, searching, messaging, calling, storing data, etc etc - into mystical black-boxes that work thanks to the benign good graces of some super-nerd off up in a cave or a cloud somewhere.
It's a hard argument because the ignoramus doesn't know what it's like to be a power user, and power users can't remember what it was like to be powerless. What does it do to the spirit of curiosity and playfulness to constantly be computing in fear? Fear you might break something, or lose something, or that the metaphors that you never really got in the first-place might come crumbling down at any moment?
Here's an experiment for you to try in your own entourage: whenever the opportunity presents itself, ask the people around you - especially young people, adolescents - basic computer questions. Stuff like: what browser do you use, do you know any others, what's your operating system called, what does a search engine do, what's a URL, what is an "app", where do they come from, do you know at what moment you're officially 'in' your desktop, etc.
In summary, Apple depends on the ignorance and disempowerment of the masses, as well as being on the front line of a never-ending ecocidal hunt for "newness" which is actually grotesque given the finite nature of the Earth's ecosystems.
Inside of our current culture where "might makes right", this surely sounds bonkers, but from outside that framework, supporting Apple (and other tech behemoths feeding us garbage content, spying on us, obfuscating reality, censoring people, making addictive services, etc) looks similarly incomprehensible, let me assure you.
Cheers again to all the people who took the time to reply initially.