I can only speak for myself, but I was and am a Microsoft hater. I bought and play-tested VB, decided it was garbage and never used it again. Delphi allowed me to "do" Windows GUIs elegantly, without all that Petzold garbage and the many limitations of VB. I also loved Delphi 1 for its world-class truly useful help files.
I enjoyed Delphi's performance and recommended it to a customer for that reason, but my own primary motivation was to avoid the terminally cumbersome Windows API.
I still maintain a legacy Delphi 7 application and I completely agree with you about the help files. It's so complete that 9 out of 10 times I don't need to search the Internet for the information I need. Every time I press F1 on another application and my browser open a poorly written documentation I miss those Delphi help files.
I enjoyed Delphi's performance and recommended it to a customer for that reason, but my own primary motivation was to avoid the terminally cumbersome Windows API.