[saiya-jin]

I work in IT whole life, ie Swiss private banks for more than decade and almost a decade elsewhere. None of the colleagues and friends properly cares about this. You are experiencing HN (or maybe SV) echo chamber effect in 200%.

People I know in category above, and rest as well buy Apple since its premium product, there is a lot of ads on it everywhere, its a lot in media ie Hollywood product placement, they like the design, they like photos it makes, and the price you have to pay makes you stand out as non-cheapskate in same vein cool fresh haircut or expensive clothing/jewelry does. Privacy isn't in top 10, ever.

Scandals? What scandals? In current world they come and go, people have little attention span with covid, wars, environmental crises and so on. That goes for Android too, people en masse simply don't care about phone privacy. Makes me a bit sad but it is what it is.