The "you can customize Android" mantra, while completely true, is surely something that the vast majority of Android users NEVER do. The ability to re-skin, re-prom or whatever it is exactly that people talk about doing with their Android phones is something only a small minority of people are doing. How do I come by my suggestion it is a small minority you ask? Because of the sheer number of Android phones that don't ever see an update and even the lack of web usage by Android phones (compared to iOS) in general tells me the great masses of Android users are likely using their phones as phones, maybe checking email, the occasional web views, maps and that is about it. Customizability is sold as a benefit, but when people aren't using it, due to complexity, is it really a benefit?
A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a guy with a large screened Android phone, while waiting for a flight at LaGuardia, looking at his home screen with it's active weather widget showing clouds and rain. It was an interesting info-graphic but I'm sure burned battery life doing something that was completely unnecessary (as you could look outside and see it raining - and at LaGuardia with all the delays, it was doubly apparent it was raining out).
Yes, the grid of icons may be a bit boring, but when all it takes to go into an app that is more dynamic, is to touch once, maybe twice, I just don't buy into the need for active widgets. I don't have active widgets on my computer either, nor do I like playing slot machines with all their blinking lights and sounds.
Maybe I'm old that way (or old in general), but I much prefer Apple's approach to making things work so that you don't have to think about or even know how to run a computer or smartphone. It's not dumbing down necessarily, but rather making sure that technology isn't in the way of getting things done.
I felt that way back when I had to use crazy complex commands to use our college computer system and a roommate had an original Classic that was just so easy to use, at least for the things I wanted to do, like write papers.
Compared to the word processing program we used on our mainframe computer, where you typed, not knowing where the page breaks, paragraphs, or really anything was, as that all needed to be formatted within the program, but was not WYSIWYG. And I say all this, having taken and learned punch card computing for my statistics studies, so I understand how computers work, or how to make them work.
