It's fascinating what projections turn up here.

I can at least agree with you that Apple was a poor choice to use in this article!

For the rest - I use neither iOS nor Android devices. However I do have a diverse tech background in programming, IT, quality assurance & testing, and a few other odds and ends over many decades. I've worked with and watched hardware and software evolution since the era of the Apple IIe and the IBM PC.

For at least the last decade, probably more, the practical/functional differences between hardware and software choices are, for the vast majority of users, mostly trivial. The marketing of course is intense, and, it's just marketing. Most people utilize only a fraction of the features and capacities of high end hardware and/or software. That part is not new, by the way - it's been true at least since GUIs for mass market computing came into use.

Of course one can pay as much for a laptop running Windows as one running MacOS. But one can also pay considerably less, and get more than adequate performance to meet the needs of most users. That is what I consider relevant metrics - what users actually need. The rest is, again, just marketing. If I don't need a high end machine, it doesn't matter which brand I don't need.

Besides, one can run Linux on inexpensive "outdated" hardware while getting better performance and flexibility, and more security, for even less.

In short, my mind is not colonized by propaganda from monopolistic tech companies. I make my choices based on what gives me the most value for the least expense, along with the least surveillance and commodification of my online activities.