The reason I don't choose a hotel 500 miles away is fairly obvious.
This also applies to parking lots for the same reason...
I think it's just cargo culting products. Apple made electronics sexy fashion accessories through their marketing, advertising and branding.
The problem is the misattribution of their success to the poor choices they have the customer loyalty to get away with.
Nobody has said "well thank God my new MacBook has no ports" or "I'm glad my battery isn't removable". The support column for these decisions is empty.
No, but they do say "thank god my device survived being splashed by water" or "I'm happy this teeny tiny thin device doesn't leave an unsightly lump in my pocket"
The de-featuring isn't capricious -- it's a result of optimizing for different tradeoffs. While it would be best for the customers if multiple vendors managed to tile the pareto frontier of feature combinations, allowing us all to pick a product that serves us best, for the vendors bunching up around a single point is a more stable equilibrium.
I use a panasonic wired headphone with a mic, $10. Airpods are $200. They wanted to increase their costs and frequency of purchase by hiding it behind accessories with higher profits and shorter longevity than the primary device.
