Imagine if Apple had this same mentality, they would never be where they are.

(/s in case it is needed.)

As a smaller project, choosing a small set of hardware and supporting it really well (aside from security reasons) seems like a much better strategy than supporting tens of devices badly (go to e.g. the /e/OS forums to see what regressions people are dealing with after monthly updates).

Indeed. Apple is financially successful, but they're ultimately a minority player in pretty much every market they engage with - including desktop/laptop computers and even mobile devices globally. And for me they are just as inaccessible as GraphineOS.

But for Apple that is not necessarily a bad thing. They're a company. Their goal is to make money and they are highly successful at it. GraphineOS is not a company. They don't make money. Which begs the question of what is GraphineOS's real goal and is it valuable? Creating a maximally secure mobile OS seems valuable on its face, but that value is undercut by its inaccessibility.