Example: I buy an iPhone over the competition because it's a superior experience. Their walled-garden (RIP) made for a less appealing attack vector than Android, their commitment to privacy is real (a reflection of Tim Cook), and how they as a company project those values against government entities are all positives.

Before then, I never imagined buying Apple products; and always believed they were overpriced (in many respects, yes) but there are other harder-to-quantify benefits.