>> Why would a company that makes its money off of selling the closest thing to a unified end-to-end experience take the risk of a dissatisfied customer because of a frustrating defect remediation experience?
You make it sound like Apple has never done it before.
Case in point: the overheating early 2011 Macbook Pros - a problem experienced by thousands of customers.
Apple basically pretended the problem didn't exist for well over a year (there was a gigantic thread about the issue in the Apple support forums). By the time they did issue their recall (or "repair order", if you want to use Apple's euphemism), a lot of people had already divested their dead Macbook Pros for a loss.
Mine had bricked just after my AppleCare expired, and I wasn't about to spend $500+ to get a replacement logic board (which basically had the same defect, except it was a brand new board. Source: I had replaced my logic board under AppleCare only to have the problem recur within two months). I was lucky that I didn't dispose of my Macbook Pro before the repair order, but I had bought a replacement laptop by the time it was issued (spoiler alert: it was my first non-Apple laptop purchase in a decade).
They also put up barriers to getting the repair order. You had to prove you had the heat issue and that it was causing crashes. Since mine was bricked, it was easy. But a friend of mine (who had two of the affected models) had to jump through hoops at the Apple Store to get his fixed.
Those early 2011 Macbook Pros were mostly high end 15" i7 models, meaning they were not on the lower end of Apple's Macbook Pro line. People paid good money for them. If Apple didn't have their heads in the sand and gave everyone replacements (i.e., a 2012 model, which didn't have heat issues) as the problem occurred, it would have been a rounding error for them. But they didn't do that.
>> fundamental misunderstanding of how Apple views its customers and how Apple makes its money.
Speaking from my one experience - I didn't feel like Apple was interested in my experience at all. While I never considered myself a fanboy, I was very loyal to Apple and totally invested in the ecosystem. After my experience with the 2011 Macbook debacle, I abandoned them completely. It meant writing off a lot of money spent on Mac software, mobile apps, etc.