He didn't say that MSFT and Samsung weren't competitors of Apple. He said MacOS and iOS are monopolies. Those are two different things.
You can switch from a monopoly over a specific service/product to a similar but not identical one. MacOS has applications and features that Windows doesn't. It historically enabled features (sealed batteries) that Windows didn't, that provided better performance.
And MacOS can run linux and windows. For people who value those things, MacOS is a complete monopoly.
iOS is even more differentiated from Android. Android won't support all the music/movies/shows I've bought from iTunes, does't work with iCloud, etc. It doesn't airplay to my other Apple devices.
These "monopolies" are why Apple is successful. When they switched to Intel they didn't lower costs by adopting commoditized PC hardware designs and outsource OS development to MSFT by licensing windows. They used Intel to provide more powerful and more flexible Macs, and continued to differentiate themselves by adding value with aluminum bodies, retina screens, mag-safe adapters, thunderbolt, etc, etc, etc.
I think Apple understands much better than most of us geeks that their customers spend a lot of time with their devices and on their Macs. If I pay $1000 more for an "equivalent" Mac than Windows PC, it costs me about 50 cents more per work hour. Which means my payback needs less than a 1% increase in productive. And it's trivial to get far more than that because despite having similar processors/ram/storage, they are in no way equivalent in build quality, flexibility, and usability.
Where Apple's model fails is for the people who don't make much per hour, so building your own, or getting the cheapest, makes sense.
Sealed batteries are the reason I switched to Mac laptops. I used to carry an extra battery with my top of line dell laptop to make it through a flight. Then i read about the amazing battery life MacBooks were offering and switched and was able to make it through a single flight without every charging a backup battery again.
It wasn't just sealed batteries, but they offer better performance because they can better customized to fit available space in the laptop. To do that the OS has to have special drivers that condition the battery, or your battery will age rapidly and need replacement in a year or so. Apple put that into MacOS, which was a huge benefit in itself.
Sealed batteries also make devices lighter and sturdier. Fewer openings, more rigid enclosures.
These all seem like minor advantages, but they specifically led to me and others to became a Mac user.
I am sorry, you are missing the point. Your anecdata doesn't make a fact, neither does your perception. This is what OP was trying to get across.
I switched from a white MacBook to black Asus many years ago. The former lasted 6 hours while the replacable battery of the Asus lasted 9-11 hours.
Now I don't go around claiming Asus is better than apple, replacable is better than sealed or that black is better than white as it was a universal fact.
They haven't made a white MacBook in a very long time.
At the time I made my switch, a MacBook Pro lasted 7 hours, my Dell with very similar configuration lasted 4.5 hours. There were numerous technical discussions about how custom sealed batteries could provide more density in the same or smaller space. But their problem was they weren't usable because they typically lost capacity after a years worth of charge cycles, so no one could figure out why Apples didn't. Until they realized MacOS had special conditioning software in it.
And while today's laptops have roughly reached battery life parity, for years MacBooks were indisputably the best at it. Look it up, the facts are out there.
You can switch from a monopoly over a specific service/product to a similar but not identical one. MacOS has applications and features that Windows doesn't. It historically enabled features (sealed batteries) that Windows didn't, that provided better performance.
And MacOS can run linux and windows. For people who value those things, MacOS is a complete monopoly.
iOS is even more differentiated from Android. Android won't support all the music/movies/shows I've bought from iTunes, does't work with iCloud, etc. It doesn't airplay to my other Apple devices.
These "monopolies" are why Apple is successful. When they switched to Intel they didn't lower costs by adopting commoditized PC hardware designs and outsource OS development to MSFT by licensing windows. They used Intel to provide more powerful and more flexible Macs, and continued to differentiate themselves by adding value with aluminum bodies, retina screens, mag-safe adapters, thunderbolt, etc, etc, etc.
I think Apple understands much better than most of us geeks that their customers spend a lot of time with their devices and on their Macs. If I pay $1000 more for an "equivalent" Mac than Windows PC, it costs me about 50 cents more per work hour. Which means my payback needs less than a 1% increase in productive. And it's trivial to get far more than that because despite having similar processors/ram/storage, they are in no way equivalent in build quality, flexibility, and usability.
Where Apple's model fails is for the people who don't make much per hour, so building your own, or getting the cheapest, makes sense.