You make a lot of fair points, but I think this is off the mark:

> Proprietary connectors that change every couple of years?

Is there any connector in particular you are thinking of that has been cycled out in just two years? All the ones I can think of lasted at least most of a decade. Some such as USB and the 30-pin connector lasted much, much longer than that (the 30-pin connector honestly lasted a long time for how crappy it was).

There's definitely some hyperbole in that statement. In the past decade, there's been:

- iPod 30-pin

- Magsafe

- Lightning

Only one of those (Lightning) is still in use, and it was a replacement for the circa 2001 iPod 30-pin. Magsafe was abandoned in favor of the non-proprietary USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3. Most are predicting that Lightning will go the way of the dodo in favor of Type-C in another generation or two of iPhones.

Thunderbolt 2 and Mini DisplayPort sometimes get mistaken as proprietary because they were mostly a Mac thing, but in reality it was an Intel thing. A handful of PCs had Thunderbolt 2, but it never really caught on, likely due to licensing fees. Hilariously enough I've seen a number of non-Apple devices equipped with Mini DisplayPort now that Apple has abandoned it.

I guess there's the iPad Smart Connector, which has changed a couple of times in recent memory, but practically nobody but Apple made devices for it anyway. Most third part peripherals connect via Bluetooth, or now with the Pro and Air USB-C.

Magsafe was introduced in 2006 and the last products with it were replaced in 2017. Lightning was introduced in 2008. Thunderbolt 2 is definitely the shortest-lived one (clearly due to a big change in technical direction with TB3) but even that lasted four years from 2011–2015.

Realistically everyone else has gone through as many connection changes. Android had mini USB, micro USB, and now USB-C. Really, the only thing Apple does special is move quickly and remove old tech promptly. Other tech have a more gradual approach by virtue of much more diverse selections.

> Magsafe was introduced in 2006 and the last products with it were replaced in 2017

There were 2 physically incompatible magsafes.

Magsafe 2 was made more slender because Apple somehow couldn't imagine that they'd be making an even thinner laptop in the future.

And then the fact that the cable was hard-wired into the wall wart...

Fair point! MagSafe 2 was introduced in 2012. 6 years after MagSafe 1, and 5 years before USB-C. 6 years is double the median lifetime of a laptop in that period IIRC and MagSafe 2 was ditched for a charger that is included on many other devices, so it doesn’t really cause the same churn.

Just look at the dongles almost every mac user religiously carries with them.

That's just because of USB-C, but USB-C is a standard that other manufacturers use that might have a 10-year lifespan. Why iPhones don't use USB-C is the bigger question.

Some of this is to make devices lighter, more compact, and maybe even have a better battery life. But yes, it comes at the cost of being user-repairable.