Google seems easier to switch from, they seem less concerned with vendor lock in (don't get me wrong though, they still have some vendor lock in. Just less than apple IMO).

I think in this case it is "choose your evil" and for a lot of people, for good reason, privacy is going to win.

This is often used as an argument against Apple, but having gone back and forth over the years, I just don't think it's true anymore. It certainly was a decade ago, but now I'm finding it hard to think of any issues I've had going from Apple to any other vendor – regardless of whether it's software (migrating data, chiefly) or hardware. At least, I don't think they're significantly worse than any other vendor.

Also, I disagree with the notion that Apple "heavily pushes vendor lock in". They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately making it harder to switch without having a good reason for that decision. After all, Apple doesn't really have to do anything at all to keep people invested in its ecosystem, since platform-specific software, by its very nature, already acts as a form of lock-in, and iOS has a lot of software that other platforms don't.

   > They certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy to switch, but I can't
   > come up with any examples off the top of my head where they're deliberately 
   > making it harder to switch without having a good reason for that decision. 

You can sync your calendar, reminders and contacts with iCloud. But you don't have to.

iCloud calendar sync is basically a CalDAV server. You can setup your own CalDAV and sync with that if you like. On the iDevice you have to set the parameters for your server which makes it slightly harder to setup than iCloud, but that's just the way it is and not Apple's fault. There are no other stumbling blocks to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Once set up it works like a charm. I can say "Hey Siri, remind me to buy pasta" and a split second later I have a new VTODO on my CalDAV server.

[1] http://radicale.org/

I think that statement's based on an old stat that, at that time, Google's revenue from licensing (Apple was paying for Maps) and advertising (including web and search advertising, and at the time Google was the default search provider on iOS and this was also before Siri was around to displace some web search) to iOS users was greater than its revenue from Android.

The facts on which all that was based (market share, basis of iOS revenue streams, etc.) have changed substantially since then.

Ah, the other figure from a report from Goldman Sachs that nobody has seen but it is now dogma.

When you find the report, please, put it.

And, by the way, using Appleinsider as source is very funny

This is not, strictly, the fault of Apple, but of app developers and myself. Either for not making multi-platform a thing (Omnifocus), or for others not stepping up to compete, or for my inability or unwillingness to continue my search for suitable alternatives.

All this said, most of my coworkers use Android devices, and several want to switch to iPhones, but have run into the same issue I did, but in reverse.

http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/technology/articles/Apple...

Source?

Then it will be easy to find any source that it is not the same old "Google makes 4 times more from iOS than from Android" that was debunked years ago for using assumptions about a royalty figure in the Oracle vs. Google trial and nothing real

What is completely ridiculous is claiming things without any proof

> it's still generally accepted that Google makes a significant amount of its mobile revenue off of iOS

This is not your claim

> Doubly-so since it doesn't even matter what the numbers are,

Oh, no, it matter when you have made a very specific claim that can't be supporte

I'm not quite ready to jump ship yet, but it's looking more and more tempting every day.

I'd love a good FOSS alternative to their software/services. I try to run my own software/services, but there are some things I still just can't replicate.

Cook very publicly tangled with shareholders that argued against Apple's environmental & accessibility initiatives:

"'When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI,' Cook said, adding that the same sentiment applied to environmental and health and safety issues.

He told Danhof that if he did not believe in climate change, he should sell his Apple shares. 'If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock,' he said.

Cook’s comments and visible passion over the issue are one of the strongest signals yet of his commitment to reducing Apple’s environmental footprint. He told shareholders that he wanted to 'leave the world better than we found it'."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook-...

Apple chooses a business model that is aligned with what it thinks is right, not the other way around.

There's nothing evil about wanting to provide contextual information and to do that they need the context. Its just the nature of the service they provide.

The argument you've presented is ends justifying the means. I don't mean to imply that there is no convincing arguments to be made involving the points you present, but this is not it.

The face value reading of purely "providing contextual information" is benign af. But that does mean evil can not lurk in implementation constraints, and/or the design decisions made in service of making that presentation monetizable.

I don't mind the extra cost that much if I can be assured that the phone is the actual product the company is making money from—not by selling ads targeting me.

The problem is that Android phones are so much better now (IMO of course). :/

Yet....I love my S6 too damn much

Do they really pitch anything under the F/OSS banner? I don't understand why Google has this reputation. Android is OSS, but that's a fairly recent addition, and it's not really played up very much.

In addition to AOSP, Chromium (and Chromium OS) are open source; while App Engine isn't, the App Engine SDK is, and Google has supported an open-source reimplementation of App Engine. Dart is open source, as is Go. And a lot of other stuff.

They definitely did advertise themselves with the motto "Do No Evil," which they dropped some time ago, but open source hasn't really been a part of Google's DNA. Google's extensive use of open source software without publishing their modifications is exactly the reason that AGPL was invented.

Google has not dropped that motto