[__sr__]

> if you know what you're doing

That is the key difference. What if I don’t want to be the sysadmin for my phone? What if I don’t want to root my phone? What if I prefer things to just work out of box?

https://youtu.be/0eEG5LVXdKo (start at 2:37)

[korm]

It's about choice. 2 billion people with Androids aren't sysadmins. The phones work fine out of the box. The parent likes choice, while some people don't miss it. No need for strawman arguments.

[__sr__]

> The phones work fine out of the box.

Do they? Is there a one touch full device backup solution for Android that doesn’t involve rooting the phone or flashing custom ROM? Is there a way to easily sync my sessages to other devices[1]?

The two billion people do no flash custom ROMs or root their devices. They do not even get sucurity patches on time. But they try to use their device just the way one would use an iPhone — with almost zero customisation. So they end up with a phone which doesn’t do everything it should straight out of the box and is vulnerable for most of its lifetime, for the sake of choices/cusomizability they would never use.

I you are talking about the choice of OEMs, I agree. It is not ideal that Apple is the only iOS vendor[2]. But the benefits, IMO, outweigh the problems.

[1] Messages for web is a recent advancement.

[2] While we are on the subject of multiple OEMs, I’d prefer if OEMs followed the Windows model where they can install a few apps and tweak things a bit, but can’t (do not?) make drastic changes to the OS. I’d prefer to live in a world where I don’t have to worry about whether the Android Phone I am looking at is more vulnerable than the others.

[bjoli]

If you are OK with a Google account, yes, there is backup. I suspect you have to pay if you want more than 15gb, but that's a pretty OK limit.