> "... I'd simply take it to one of the many nearby Apple Stores, ..."

Which hooks up quite well with the aformentioned image of apple being more of an urban phenomenon. The only apple stores around here sell apples - and other fruit. The 'nearest apple store' would be about 70 km to the south, I guess.

In contrast, the USB port on my laptop is about half a meter away from me. Fixing an Android device would take me a few minutes - flash, reboot, restore backup. Having an iOS device fixed would take a significant part of a day, if not longer.

In other words, if you a) live in an urbanised area which b) sports apple stores you might be able to get your problems fixed. If you live elsewhere you'll be better off fixing those problems yourself - assuming you have the technical aptitude needed to do so.

I hear what you're saying about Apple stores being focussed in urban areas.

Regarding problems that can be resolved by flashing the device, the same solution can be applied to iPhones BTW.

Note everyone is missing the point of my post (and I'll have to accept blame for that), but still...

> Try taking your HTC One M8 back to Carphone Warehouse if you ever get in trouble. I'd be interested to see how their service compares.

I'd just load it up with fastboot and reflash the firmware image. No need to go to a store of any kind. 5 minutes and done :)

And I'm 8 hours in to that process. Not 5 minutes. I've learnt a load of stuff I never knew about Android in the process, but the facts are it still doesn't work and I've wasted several hours.

And yes that's my fault. I probably started out by doing the wrong things and wasting a load of time. But I'm not stupid, I just didn't know where to begin.

My point, was that I am not stupid enough to assume the rest of the world has to be exactly like my immediate surroundings. Unlike author of the article submitted here.

It's a very weak base for an article.

Thankfully I can understand what you said. Because I have recently flashed my S2 with custom Lollipop ROM.