I see apple as like LVMH, but for phones. It has a minority of overall sales, but a majority of the “luxury” part of the market. This gives them influence over the whole market, but not a real monopoly.
It's strange how they've convinced people that, considering there's nothing at all luxurious about their products, not even the price...
What's luxurious about Apple products is that they tend to respect your time
Relative to when Microsoft intentionally sabotages user experience, sure, but that's a low bar. I'll agree with you more whenever macOS allows me to open more than 1 calculator window at a time, cut files, stop hijacking bluetooth when the lid is closed, and other productivity killing nuisances that make me question if they ever do user studies.