Right. iOS was very feature-anaemic for its first 6-ish years. I switched to the iPhone in 2011 after being a faithful PocketPC/Windows Mobile user for more than a decade - but I had to jailbreak my iPhones to get the system tweaks from Cydia that I felt I really needed - things like a Today screen, AdBlock, raw file system access for exchanging files with my PC (and for getting my data out of oppressively siloed applications, etc.)

Since iOS 8 the system has had most of that functionality baked-in or is officially supported by Apple’s APIs for third-party devs. The only real things I feel I’m missing out right now on iOS 14 is raw FS access and easy sideloading.

I don't need raw file system access nor do I think most do, but using the phone as a USB drive is something I've always wanted and had many situations where it would have been useful. Apple could enable iPhone and iPad to be encrypted general storage devices.

> easy sideloading

Workaround available. [1]

[1] https://altstore.io/

They definitely had this functionality since the iPod (being a general usb storage). I haven’t tried it since starting to use web storage (eg google drive) but used this feature in high school with my original iPhone and iPhone 3g.

> I haven’t tried it since starting to use web storage (eg google drive) but used this feature in high school with my original iPhone and iPhone 3g.

Unless you jailbroke your iPhone 2G and 3G that's an impossibility: the iPhone has never officially supported USB Mass Storage mode: it has always only ever officially supported MTP/PTP (and DFU) over USB.

Shouldn't that be anticipated though? The developers at Apple (or any developer in general) cannot possibly think of every little thing that user might want to do with their device. That's why nothing stays at v1.0 for very long. Users report bugs, and even make requests (however that might look). Any developer not looking to incorporate these requests will see their product wither and die.

Sure, sometimes a 3rd party comes along and makes a great product that once it is used, it feels like it is just something that should have always been there. Apple being Apple, they are going to want full control, so if they can't acquire the tool to do what they want, you know they will develop it internally. Every tech company does this. FB/Snap/Insta/etc have all borrowed/stolen/re-implemented.

You could just as easily say it was driven by Android competitors.