Also, say you have one of these phones, and are in a major city, then break it. How will you get the parts you need to repair it? How many hours will you be without a phone?
With Apple phones, it's typically same day service to get it repaired. Worst case, you can get a new phone with your data mostly transferred, again, same day.
The Ars article you link is pointing out that Apple is dropping software support for laptops that are 6 years old. That's better than pretty much any other vendor.
As far as laptop repairs go, frame.work is probably the best non-apple option, but they don't have a fixed policy for how long replacement parts will be available. The story is similar for Apple:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
says they provide parts for up to 7 years, and battery swaps for up to 10 (subject to part availability). I hope frame.work will be able to do better, but I challenge you to find any laptop company significantly better than this.
(Other than soldered ram and disk, I honestly don't care about third party parts. It's not like Apple replacement part markups are insane or there are significantly better parts available. I've definitely never used third party parts for other brands of laptops, even when they were available. However, I've been repeatedly screwed over getting other brands of laptops repaired, especially under warranty.)
Anyway, I get why Apple has a bad reputation for support and repairability. There objectively bad. However, that doesn't mean they're not simultaneously also the best option (or close to being the best).
I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or price. I am arguing over hack-ability; that's it. I hope you can understand that.
Neither was the comment you replied to.
They were arguing that Apple provides excellent hardware support (in terms of repairs and how long they take) and lifetime (in terms of how long updates are provided for the device).
Hackability is irrelevant. Apple clearly doesn’t target that market and hadn’t since the Apple II days.
Would you buy a Lamborghini and complain it makes a terrible truck?
That’s not something Apple designs their products for, and their users are either fine with that or willing to make the trade off for the other things Apple does prioritize.
Some are more "hackable" than an iPhone, but only in some strange symbolic way, since once you de-googled android is somehow more user-hostile than iOS and completely unhackable in practice (in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft).
I'm a happy owner of a pine book pro, and a pc engines router; I get it. However, I don't think there are any viable Linux laptops or phones that compare favorably to the linux laptop + phone I had a decade ago.
"(in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft)."
So either the hardware you bought isn't letting you do what you want with it (this includes iPhone too!) Or you become a better hacker and get it to work yourself.