The Macs were wonderfully designed and built hardware but what a crappy company to have dealings with, we got a few stern letters and injunctions to try and get us out of the Mac repair business, Apple *really* don't like competition.
Can't argue with you there. Apple as a company is not something I've ever been fond of, well not since the early days of the Apple II anyway. Unlike many people though, I'm able to separate Apple products from Apple the company, and I can appreciate well designed products even if I'm not fond of the company.
Really in the case of Apple it's the cult like dedication of a portion of their customer base that I find distasteful. Waiting in line for hours to get the latest iPhone? No thanks, I'll order last year's model at steep discount online and have it in my hand a day or two later without any hassle.
The original Macs were not a well designed product, from a software standpoint, IMHO. I worked a lot on Apple II and some on Apple III products and was quite excited when the Mac first came out, given it was a huge leap from the PC and standard computers of the day. My enthusiasm quickly changed to disdain for the company and their products though when I saw the horrible mess that was the original Mac OS. It was totally filled with bugs and released way too prematurely, but I assume management (Steve Jobs most likely) pushed it through anyways. As a software developer, you had to run through hoops to get around all the bugs and non-working functions. Many users likely never even knew how horrible the OS was under the hood, but developers certainly did.
Well, Steve Jobs, a man who many think was brilliant, some who even consider him almost a god, was someone I couldn't stand and I never understood one bit all the hype and praise given to him. He's long gone now though, and last year I decided to give Apple another chance, with the release of their M1 Mac, and have to say I'm impressed, especially from the standpoint of value for one's money in terms of speed, at least value compared to previous generation Macs. I still prefer PCs running Windows, given that's where I've invested most of my efforts and is the only environment capable of running lots of the apps I require. But for audio, video, and other creative type apps, I think Mac is the preferred platform.