Your argument is completely valid for this community, people who like to go off the reservation and run their own applications, code and OS.

However, the big draw of an iPhone is that it is a managed device, not a full-fledged computer+phone. Anybody who really wants to root their phone should get an Android device, the overarching purpose of an iPhone is to take away this control for the type of stability a casual user needs. It's totally counterintuitive to want to have complete user control of a managed device.

Furthermore, the issue of carriers not updating phones is an issue anyone who doesn't root their phone. It's like saying your car can get double the mileage, but you have to pull out the transmission by hand to install a clutch.

I made my parents get a Mac so I didn't have to keep fixing their BIOS. I'll be damned if I'm going to drive 370 miles to re-flash their phone after Android gets buggy and slow due to background processes. (They dig their feet into the ground, and will simply not learn about this.)

Those ordinary people will still get an Android, because it's on two-for-one offer or the salesman tells them to. And they'll be quite happy because their phone will make calls, and pick up their email, surf the web, play angry birds and give them directions and all the other things that a modern smartphone does. They'll never read Engadget and find out that they're a whole 6 months behind the software curve, and even if someone tells them they will quite rightly not care.

Because that is what we're talking about isn't it? Not BIOS problems or constant malware infestations, but geek rage at not being on the cutting edge. The intersection of people who care and can't help themselves is insignificant and consists mainly of whiny tech power-users who have nowhere to go but Android.

I don't know many non-developers using Android that have ever downloaded an application, let alone set up their email.

I don't know many non-developers using iOS that don't have a favorite app.

But yes, I am seeing a ton of people getting Android phones because it's what the salesman's hawking. Preference in this situation is tantamount to just straight up object-lust. Those who make do are probably better off than the rest of us arguing constantly about superiority.

I'm willing to root my Android. I've just been frustrated having to manage the process of updating my phone anytime a new OS comes out (as opposed to having the carriers do it), and the experience I detailed with doing something as simple as clearing the data from my iPhone makes we wary of doing this. Fortunately the Android community is getting better and better and producing root tools that you can simply download as an .apk, which is what I did with my Droid. This process does not work for my Galaxy, so I will probably end up manually doing this. I am worried that I will brick my phone since it is unsupported.

Hopefully the takeaway from this post was not a debate around root or jailbreaking, it was that there is a fundamental difference in the market forces playing out here. I always find that personally interesting, and personally frustrating right now.

I've got a Milestone. The reason I haven't rooted it is that I don't want download and run a possibly trojaned ROM off some guy from the internet.

I would like to pay a company for access to regular updates to Android on my phone (as long as there was QA to make sure my phone was supported).