I don' really understand where people's enthusiasm for the hardware comes from (aside from the chips). They have corrected many of the functional compromises of the Ive era, but it seems otherwise unambitous. The recent Pro iPhones have a certain unflattering chunkiness. MacBooks have also grown to an uncomfortable weight and lost some of the elegance of prior design. They also suffer from an unnecessarily huge notch. On top of that there are a number of products whose usability concerns never got addressed. AirPods Max and Vision Pro are too heavy to wear for a long time and the ergonomic travesty of using and ridiculousness of charging the Magic Mouse remain unaddressed. Apple Watches got a tenth of the standby time of Garmin and other sport watches.

It's not that the hardware is horrible, but I think if it weren't for the ecosystem and chips most Apple products would seem quite unremarkable.