Bolded: What quantitive data are you basing this on? I mean I can tell you from perspective from those who use technology from all competitors, Apple still is king in terms of what they offer with stability/fluidity with iOS in respect the iPhone, being that’s what we’re discussing here.
The iPhone has always brought a simplistic experience, but doesn’t necessarily allow the customization that others want. But what speaks milestones for iOS/the iPhone, is it doesn’t necessarily need ‘new features’ every year, it’s the continual updates/security and overall performance with A-series processors that trump pretty much anything else in the smart phone area.
Simple. I’ll give you some examples of the declining user experience from a hardware and software point of view. Not just for IOS but Apple devices and software in general.
Take a look at the first unibody MacBook of the late 2008. User accessible back door, opens without any tool by pressing a latch allowing a) replace the battery without a tool, b) upgrade the ram, c) replace/upgrade the hdd/ssd. MagSafe, SD card slot, 2 USB ports. And how user accessible any modern MacBook? None zilch. Apple took all those away. Why? To make it thinner. Form over function. Now you need dongles to add all those missing ports.
Take a look at the 2012 Mac Mini for example. How easy it was to service and upgrade and look at the current Mac Mini now. Well, we are lucky that we still have a Mac Mini to be honest.
Look at Airport modems and Time Capsule. Gone, killed and buried. Why? Not profitable. Never mind people loved them. I still use my Airport Expresses all over the house to Airplay music with their digital output port. No other modem that I know to fulfil that function to my knowledge.
Look at the ATV3 vs ATV4. It was $100 with toslink digital audio and now its $200 without the toslink port but its 4K and you can load Apps. My ATV3s are still functioning and serve me well.
Ask people how much they like the new butterfly keyboard compared to the old scissor mechanism.
Speaking of software; What happened to Aperture? Similarly every iteration of the MacOS Server has been crippled and rendered less functional. It’s just a matter of time Apple will kill that too.
Airport Utility was crippled and rendered less functional with the new version and now its irrelevant because the Airports are dead anyway.
Similarly the Disk Utility was more powerful and functional before.
iMovie 9 still performs better than iMovie 10 and 10 is not backwardly compatible.
iTunes has been chopped and reduced in functionality and finally the ability to back ipa files and being able to restore Apps from your own backup library has been deleted.
Back To My Mac is killed. Which never worked all that great but it could have been improved rather than killed.
As for the IOS, it’s been a decade since it came to life and we still have no means to fully interact with peripherals like flash disks, external drives, mice etc. No multi user accounts, no floating and scalable windows for multitasking. Most of these are available on a Samsung Android by the way.
Now with the implementation of the so called “security” measures users cannot even use a third party shop to replace the battery on an iPhone unless they ignore the unavailability of the health data for the battery.
The T2 chip pretty much makes all non-Apple repairs impossible on the new Macs and in most cases demands the entire logic board to be replaced for a minor problem like a keyboard failure. Great user experience right?
I can go on and on but I think this is enough for the quantitative data that you were asking for the declining user experience, which is a combination of hardware and software, and in my opinion Apple is continually giving me less and less of that every year.
