An earlier reference to Apple in the discussion about Kodak got me thinking about the two of them. Yes, both are of the pricier end of the spectrum but, IMO, both have set pretty high standards of quality in their respective marketplaces. I’ve used both since back into the 1970s and, while I also using stuff from competitors, Apple and Kodak are simply high quality, dependable, and predictable.
Back in those 70s I worked for some years in a medium volume, 3,000 rolls/day, color photofinishing lab and we were all Kodak in chemicals, paper, and equipment. They even came in a did an audit of our production and showed us how we could reduce paper waste by $1 million/year by making some production changes. To accomplish that I was also sent to their facility in Whittier for training and it was top-notch, and, as a result, we did reduce paper waste by that amount, which cost them sales to us.
I was an early adopter of Apple stuff, buying an Apple ][ in ‘78 while my friends were buying other brands. Our experiences were totally different in that the ][ just worked and had a nice range of high quality add-ones as the technology evolved. Later I switched to the PC world due to my need to run AutoCAD but went back to Apple years later and now run both, including Linux, and when it comes to Apple, the stuff just works and, most importantly, it all works together without messing around with jumper settings, config files, etc.
Quality is expensive.