The seriously overpriced accessories they sell is probably part of the reasons non-apple customers tend to assume this. Like they have a few accessories that cost about 10x more than pretty good quality third party alternatives, and often more than double what it costs for literally better build quality third party alternatives.
And I'm not talking about the accessories that have enough active electronics to possibly justify it (pencil, or airpods), but things like cases, wheels, stands, dongles, etc.
Apple accessories very much are trying to nickel and dime people (on top of hardware that is already quite expensive), so it is unsurprising that people would (mistakenly) assume that Apple would try to do the same with digital subscriptions.
In the car analogy that would be more like all the trim levels and hardware addons being hugely overpriced... but that's definitely not a new thing in the car world.
The wheels and stand on the mac pro stuff is weird but they are kind of in line with the pricing of the competing products. If you look at the cases for the iphone, all of the cases they sell in the Apple Store are pretty expensive, but all of them are quite good. If you go to a 3rd party store and look for things of the same quality, they cost the same. Good cases just cost a bit of money.
Now the lightning adapters I agree on. Those were absurd. But now they have USB-C on most of their products and they have dropped the cost of adapters quite a lot. The USB-C to AUX adapter contains a full DAC which is tested to be one of the best you can get, and it costs $9.
People are paying for the branding, not the item. It's the same reason a rolex is substantially more expensive than a watch that tells time just as well - people spend money on more expensive versions of things that provide no additional practical benefit explicitly to demonstrate that they have money to burn. If you don't care about the brand, you can still buy third party options and they work just fine at a fraction of the cost. Indeed if you had to pay for the expensive apple version, it wouldn't mean anything that you spent so much, and then it would ironically be significantly less valuable.
Seems a stretch to readily assume Apple would mimic digital subscriptions with their high priced accessories strategy where they presumably don’t even have dominance, and don’t even have stuff like a popular or well liked monitor any more vs 2009’s Thunderbolt. If this was true. It would also mean there is little press and casual discussion on how much more expensive Apple’s equivalent digital services are.
Add on people across the spectrum may buy expensive-ish or expensive hardware, but cheap out on [any] digital purchases or subscriptions.
All of this makes the reason to assume appear to be because of bias and disliking of the brand.
And I'm not talking about the accessories that have enough active electronics to possibly justify it (pencil, or airpods), but things like cases, wheels, stands, dongles, etc.
Apple accessories very much are trying to nickel and dime people (on top of hardware that is already quite expensive), so it is unsurprising that people would (mistakenly) assume that Apple would try to do the same with digital subscriptions.