I've thought that Apple has been in a rut or declining for over a decade. Their hardware designs are trite & a little ugly; their UI just is neither attractive

I've thought that Apple has been in a rut or declining for over a decade. Their hardware designs are trite & a little ugly; their UI just is neither attractive nor easy on the eyes; their cloud services don't really deliver privacy and security (iCloud isn't end-to-end encrypted, and iMessage allows Apple to MitM). At a certain point, one has to ask: why pay the premium? Why not just use Linux?