This. It's not about the hardware anymore, it's the software, services, and security that matter now. On these fronts Google is light years beyond Samsung or Apple, and the expanse is only going to get greater over the next 10 years, esp with its data resources combined with its advances in AI. Skate to where the puck is going.
Neither Google nor Microsoft (I wouldn't even count Samsung among the top players here) come close to the out-of-the-box experience and integration of services like you get in the Apple orchard.
Read a book on my iPad and have my place, bookmark, notes, automatically show up my Mac. Same with movies and podcasts; they pick up from where I left even when I switch devices. AirPods work with all my devices without cumbersome unpair/re-pairing. Copy/paste across devices. The cloud-synced documents without even having to manually save them.
All of that and more, all so seamless, with no configuration required on my part beyond signing with my Apple ID once on each device. This makes a huge difference to me as a user and Apple aren't under threat from anyone on that side.
On the other hand, Apples lack of support for standards is hurting their users. Metal instead of Vulkan, USB Micro/C vs. Lightning. No Miracast support. Most TV software has built in support for Android (simply show videos and photos on your TV). Better integration into the system. My router supports landline calls via smartphone, but iOS doesn't allow integration into the dialer. Copying non-iTunes music to your iPhone is still a PITA. If you don't live in an exclusively Apple environment, your experience will suck. Honestly, Google and the bad update support is the only reason I won't switch to Android. Definitely not the day-to-day user experience.
Airplay was created because Miracast had sucked for years and still does. Apple always creates proprietary enhancements to make technologies work well in real use for real customers, like they did with Airplay/FaceTime, etc.
It's not so much about the individual points anyway, but about the mentality in general. I came up with these examples off the top of my head.
First of all, that Apple is the only one providing usable real-world solutions is simply not true. Secondly, it still doesn't invalidate my point. Even if Android works badly with third party products, Apple is often absolutely incompatible.
Disclaimer: I'm an iPhone user, mainly for security/privacy reasons.
> Apples lack of support for standards is hurting their users. Metal instead of Vulkan
No. As a user, Metal gave me games with better graphics than OpenGL would have — I don't know about Vulcan being viable at the time, or now, but I don't think it would be as efficient for Apple-specific hardware than Apple's own API.
> No Miracast support.
Irrelevant; I have AppleTV and AirPlay. Does Miracast allow, say games, to present their UI on the iPhone/iPad while showing the action on the TV, as two distinct displays?
