My rationale is this: apple users love spending money, so they can go ahead and spend it.

Fuck’em.

People like being fucked
True that. If people actually cared we would see better things in the world for example - Firefox dominating the market. Now I don’t care if people use Brave/Samsung/Chrome/Vivaldi/Edge but the fact that they may all lead to Google dictating the Open Web sucks.
I love that you bring up web browsers as an example while saying that Apple users don’t care enough about the technological landscape. Safari is the leading competitor to chrome! Without those Apple users sticking to the browser they know on the system you ridicule, the problem you’ve identified would be worse.

I’m an Apple laptop user with a Linux server. I love Linux and have thought about switching many times, but I don’t for the following reasons:

My Apple computers have lasted me twice as long as any other brand I’ve owned, and they don’t really die—they just get so old that I want a new one.

I never have to worry about incompatible hardware at any time, nor do I have to check for compatibility before upgrading my OS.

They never charge for a new OS, and all of their basic software is free, and in some cases better than Microsoft Office.

Whatever product I use from them, it is definitely going to feel high quality.

The screens are always really nice, and everything is guaranteed to look crisp and clear.

They cost more money, but it isn’t like they give you nothing for it. If Linux isn’t a great option for some reason, an Apple device is going to be much less exploitative with advertising and spyware than Windows is.

I understand where the hate comes from, but I wish some Apple haters would back up for a minute and realize that there are power users who have perfectly good reasons to like that hardware.

Apple MacBooks and iMacs don’t have this side-loading issue like their mobile devices do. You can install anything you want to as long as it’s supported on a Mac, and from anywhere you want. So they are more or less a more premium Linux variant. I’m not sure why you came in here thinking this discussion applied to non mobile devices.
The base of this thread I’m replying to says “Apple products”. The comment that I am directly responding to is calling out all Apple users. More broadly the thread is about phones, but this particular side stream was about Apple in general, and I was providing my two cents.