[jameshart]

The claim that Apple don’t deserve to be praised for their UX because Apple is a hardware company, so therefore are not constrained by the realities affecting software businesses, and are thus able to pursue an uncompromised user experience… is rather given the lie by the fact that every other hardware vendor is universally and uniformly terrible at UX.

[makeitdouble]

It can be looked at from a different angle: Apple always had a more restricted ecosystem (even now, when arguably it's at peak popularity), driven by a "our way or the highway" mentality that helps keep the experience within a happy path while forcing other needs outside of the platform.

It's not a ding against Apple, if you're running a select shop people expect a curated experience, but you can't look at it the same way as a home center or hardware shop.