So, you admittedly have no real firsthand experience with the Android ecosystem at all. This is what I was talking about in my last post. Regardless, I do appreciate all the information you've provided. Most people in MR wouldn't even go that far.
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that my choice of smartphone is not really going to have a material impact on how well Apple does as a company. We can argue until the cows come home about how Google Assistant is better, about how there are cheaper alternatives that have 120hz refresh rate, about how Android supposedly does this or that one thing better, the fact is that people are buying iPhones (and other Apple products), and Apple is still making a ton of money.
It's a common recurring phenomenon where people like to latch on to news with the slightest hint of Apple negativity, and use it to paint the image of a rudderless company on the brink of irrelevance. Back when I first bought my 4s, there were already people on Cnet claiming that Android market share would dwarf that of iOS, how app developers would soon abandon the iOS App Store soon after, and yes, how Android hardware offered a better deal because they were cheaper and offered better specs on paper (the Google Nexus 7).
So yes, the arguments I see being made today are nothing new, and each and every time, Apple has gone on to do the exact opposite of what "experts" claimed they ought to do, and prospered for it. When people said they needed a netbook, Apple released the iPad. Instead of cheaper phones, Apple actually raised prices, while relying on the grey market and trade-in programmes to keep prices affordable (while at the same time leveraging their devices' longer durability, length of support and access to parts to maintain resale values). At the same time, instead of lowering prices, Apple banks on value, meaning that while customers may pay more upfront, they quickly earn it back in the form of better productivity and fewer problems overall. You laugh at the iPhone's notch; I was able to unlock my colleague's android phone with a photo of her (with her knowledge and permission). Instead of Apple acquiring large companies like Netflix, Apple would instead opt to build up their services portfolio from scratch.
And the one point I don't see you or anyone here addressing head on is that while Apple has the smaller market share, developers continue to release apps for iOS first or exclusively, in part because Apple has successfully aggregated an affluent user base with a higher propensity to spend. Even if you are right in that I can find a cheaper android tablet with better specs, what's the point when the apps I have come to rely on for work and leisure (eg: lumafusion, notability, ivory, overcast, infuse, Play) aren't available on it?
Perhaps we should be trying to explain Apple's success, not explain it away. Apple's ecosystem is designed around people that easily spend money. It's a common trope around here that Apple gear is overpriced (which I disagree with) but given that, and their financials which are unlike any other comparable company, you can only conclude that Apple buyers do spend money, and a lot of it too.
I'm end-to-end Apple gear, because I don't want to dick around with cobbling some system together, deal with any more accounts than I already have (200+ passwords in my 1Password - welcome to adulthood), or deal with security issues. I've worked hard and while I am not rich by any means, I have enough left over to still splurge on nice things every now and then after deducting expenses, and at this point in my life I want things to be easy more than I want them to be cheap.
I am Apple's target market. Is Apple Music lower quality or more expensive? I literally don't care. I just want to be able to pull up a song on my watch and stream it to my airpods no matter where I am. That's it. I don't have to install an app. I don't need to enter my l/p. I can airplay it to damn near everything.
This is what Apple does. They rarely beat competitors on the bullet list, but when it comes to 'look at your phone and all your stuff is unlocked', they're unbeatable. They play the system integration game better than anyone else, and if it costs a few bucks more, I'm happy to pay it.
This is why I say - the moment you start to go into nitty gritty like specs, you have lost the plot, because that's not what the majority of Apple's user base bases their purchasing decisions on. It's one of those things which is really hard to quantify, but it obviously matters. Otherwise, Apple wouldn't be around, much less the size that they are today.
It sounds like you don't work with IT/tech people, so I'm not surprised that they need tech support for any phone, to be honest. I work in software and every Android user I know knows their phone inside and out. I could counter many of these points with actual experience, but it doesn't sound like you're willing to give the Android ecosystem an honest try, and that's okay. My goal is to broaden minds, not change them. 😊
However, I will say you're missing out on a lot in life by not experiencing things, be it tech or otherwise.
I am a primary school teacher, so the people around me are teachers as well, with varying degrees of comfort level surrounding technology, but generally, they are not the ones to tinker with devices as well. To give you a general idea, I am the one who showed them that they could plug in their android phone to their school laptop via a usb-c cable to drag files on and off their phones.
Ironically, the people I know don't seem to care about Dex because they need an external display, keyboard and mouse to make it work, and I also happen to be one of the very few with a monitor and dock at my desk. They simply don't see the point of it because for them, the purpose of a computer is to get things done, they already have their work-issued laptop for that, and a docked smartphone is simply a worse alternative for stuff like checking mail, working on google docs or preparing lesson resources.
As to your point about possibly missing out, I don't deny that. Perhaps if this were before the pandemic, I would still have been open to keeping a second phone around just to play with it. But since taking on a new portfolio (Maths) and with the arrival of a new principal, I have found myself busier in the past few years. The Nintendo Switch I purchased in 2020 has been lying on my desk largely unused. I miss the days when I was experimenting on how to make my new iPad work for me or playing around with the workflow app (now known as Shortcuts). I have stopped subscribing to all my streaming services save for YouTube Premium and Prime. And I go back to my earlier point about how I want things to work more than I want them to be cheap.
I don't care about being able to change keyboards or theme my phone or change launchers because they don't really do anything to make me more efficient. Productivity is my iPad connecting to my 2013 Apple TV flawlessly day after day after day. Productivity is annotating on pdf documents in notability using my Apple Pencil. Productivity is not having to worry that dropbox runs rampant in the background (like it did on my colleague's android phone) and killed her battery in half a day. And back when Tweetbot was still a thing, "productivity" was not having to deal with the Android version of the twitter app. 😬
I know it sounds like I am disparaging Android a lot. I am sure it has its strengths and its redeeming qualities, but so does iOS (and Apple), and if all you are doing is simply comparing Apple to everyone else and then go “Hey, Apple isn’t following what everyone else is doing, so I don’t think whatever Apple is doing is going to work”, I think they go down the wrong path, because you are comparing Apple too much to other companies, and you are not allowing Apple’s unique attributes to speak for themselves or recognise how Apple is able to set themselves apart from the competition.
