Long support (5+ years), physical first-party stores for support every 100ish miles in the USA, compatibility with Apple's proprietary iMessage and FaceTime protocols. An OS that's generally considered easier to use, with more walls in place to protect users from malware. A simple $400ish price point.
Not a huge difference from Samsung's cheaper offerings on paper, but a lot of little things that add up to a better experience for many older users.
My limited experience with the Apple store seem a reason to stay AWAY from Apple.
They wouldn't look at the phone. They made me stand in line to make an appointment to come back, all the while their team of "experts" stood around chatting. It came across to me as horribly elitist, and one of the worst retail experiences I can recall.
Also, entry level iPhones and iPads don't have anemic SoCs. They're just a generation or so behind what gets put in the flagship Pro models, which are still more powerful than what you'll find in many less-than-flagship Android phones.
I have an upper-entry-level Android tablet I bought for development/testing which has a price that's within spitting distance of that of a refurbished iPad, and it's stunning that something as weak as the SoC it's built with is on store shelves in 2023. It lags and stutters all over the place, and even an entry level iPad from 4 years ago carrying around the extra weight of the latest version of iPadOS would destroy it in terms of performance.
It’s honestly not even funny how much ahead iphone CPUs are to the at the time flagship android offerings. There is like 2, sometimes 3 years of difference.
Not a huge difference from Samsung's cheaper offerings on paper, but a lot of little things that add up to a better experience for many older users.