The person was specifically suggesting hiring extra developers for maintenance. While I'm familiar with the concept that "nine women can't birth a baby in a month", I don't think that applies so much to maintenance of old code paths. Apple makes over $100b in net profit per year, a truly unfathomable amount of money, they can afford it, and I think not only can they afford it but that it would benefit them. Even if only 1% of your users use X, for Apple that might translate to perhaps 10 million people using X, or at 0.1% 1 million. Hiring a dev to improve the experience for that many people just makes sense at scale, software is write-once reproduce-a-million-times-for-free.

I have no doubt the bean counters have drawn up every kind of spreadsheet they can imagine trying to quantify it as being not worth it, but I don't think these kinds of quality of life things can be easily quantified, because each small thing maintained might only impact a small number of users but collectively, all of these kinds of small things add up to either a system with sharp corners that constantly papercuts the user (current Apple software), or one that is so seamless that it engenders customer loyalty for decades (old Apple software). This kind of shortsighted penny-pinching is how companies become a shell of their former selves, suffering a slow death-by-MBA.