They were screwed by Microsoft in the past. And now they're the ones screwing every single small and mid-sized software shop everywhere.
When will we stop buying their products?
Before the iPhone, because I never liked the Mac UI with the bar at the top and the apps menu over there and I didn't need an iPod.
After the iPhone, a personal boycott because of the walled garden. It was not immediately clear what the endgame would be but it was pretty clear that this level of control by a single corporation on a large part of the world is a bad thing.
People who do write for it live in this electronic ghetto regardless of their size.
The customer isn't king, she is a serf.
When their competitors finally bother to pay attention to build quality.
It's true that it might not apply to all their products, because they also cater to people without 6-figure USD equivalent incomes, but you can buy the expensive stuff.
Some phones are way more expensive than A top line, have massive cameras, better screens, batteries (I mean real life, one of failures on A side for first decade), better integration with rest of the electronic world (like streaming fullhd tv from phone to any TV I saw so far, or having mouse&keyboard desktop on big screen via single USB-C cable out of box, or very good pen within the phone - image editing goes to another level). Plus you have much bigger variety, anything from 50$. And they are open, not unimportant aspect not only for many HN users.
That doesn't mean they do bad products, in contrary. But emotions aside, its now just another set of products with personally weird philosophy, even weirder emotional fanbase and just a much more closed ecosystem.
tl;dr: Some people are just happy with Apple products; we're not cult members and saying that is insulting, frankly.
Some people are fanboys of Linux products, and all their shit runs Linux or some other Unix or BSD (more fanboys than for Apple, probably).
I even know a few people who just LOVE Microsoft and their products.
It's fun to make fun of Apple people, I know because I do that too, but in reality the reason people like me own all that stuff is because it "just works together" and I don't have to fiddle with a bunch of random brand stuff to get it to work together, plus I have had a bad experience with Google so I won't use their products. If I hadn't had a bad experience with Google, I may have everything Google branded right now so it "just works together" too.
I don't get why you immediately try to move discussion into extremes, maybe your style but not most of folks - either you have everything X, or everything Y. Sort of proving exactly my point. You don't even try to understand my argument - I can integrate anything, from any manufacturer. Plug in DELL monitor via usb-c, just works, immediately. Connect Sennheiser earplugs (since airpods pro sounds quality leaves a lot to be desired), bam and flacs flow via aptx-hd seamlessly. I could go on and on.
Apple has very tiny offer to cater to all our needs and budgets. These days, even if price is not the problem, often they don't offer the best on the market. So smart thing is to have a diverse set, the opposite of locked-down you describe. People are beginning to be fed up with that since apple is showing its true colors, and this topic and discussion is exactly about it.