Why would someone look for an alternative to a product they were happy with? It’s not really that complicated.
Price, being able to repair it, a bad experience with customer services, slave labour, upgradeability. A few things that come to mind.
When you buy brands, you are paying for the brand. its as simple as that. Apple markets itself as a fashionable trendy brand, always has.
You pay more just for the brand, for the "prestige" of being an owner of the brand. They set up their stores as temples, and cheer people that will stand for days in a queue to be one of the first owners of the latest product.
Its consumerism on overdrive, not buying out of necessity, but buying out of making a fashion statement for those shallow enough to be susceptible to that sort of thing. Usually women, like Fade said, they are more easily led by emotions, but with the feminisation of men its becoming quite prevalent among males too. Its the culmination of years of research in "public relations", "spin", "propaganda", "advertising", "mind control" all different words for the same thing. They know what buttons to press to get the desired outcomes.
It works, thats why they do it. Does it make you dumb? No, it makes you human, with all the human tendencies that brings along with it.
Being conned doesnt make us dumb, it means we let our guard down and a predator took advantage of that.
Dumb is making that same mistake again. Nobody likes to be conned, to feel naive enough to be taken advantage of, let alone admit it.
But until we admit what allowed us to be conned in the first place we cannot address it and avoid it happening again.
The first stage is denial and ridicule, then comes some realisation, then anger at being fooled.
All big companies play the same game, they stick their noses into politics to pretend they care, when they just want your damn money, and if you stood in the way of their profits you will find out just how much they really "care".
Is there a single western company more in bed with the Chinese Communist Party than Apple?
The same organ stealing Chinese Communist Party that keeps slaves in concentration camps.