> Privacy vs walled garden is a hard bet

I don't believe this is true or even a consideration for the majority of users.

Which proof do you need? Walled garden is bad for users, even if they do not (yet) realize it.

> Walled garden is bad for users

Proof of that, specifically.

Users have less freedom and cannot do many things by definition. Granted, this may not be important for everyone, but neither is freedom of speech.

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. Lock-in costs that create barriers to market entry may result in antitrust action against a monopoly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

> this may not be important for everyone

It’s of marginal importance to me, but the ability to install virtually anything on the App Store reasonably confident it’s not going to break my primary communication device or exfiltrate my data (without my permission) etc etc is of far more importance.

I rely on my phone very heavily and the fact that it reliably Just Fucking Works is much much more important than being able to — for example — run Firefox on it

Walled garden is just an anti-marketing term. I tried android for half a year in 2020. I hoped for caller id lookup/block, better text management (input box ops), ubo-like ads blocking, to name a few, and the freedom and “endless features” in general. Instead I got my AB available to various third-parties who didn’t even return what they promised. It is the same walled garden, but instead of walls there are endless traps and pits. Happily switched back to ios, and can say I’m too sick of that experiment to ever try to go back.

That's your experience, but my experience is very different. I rooted my phone, installed DroidWall (now AFWall) and have iptable rules to block apps from accessing the internet.

I can stop programs from running on startup and can force them to be killed instantly when they are closed so they aren't running in the background.

I can also write and run my own programs without having to own Apple hardware and can distribute them without paying $99.

For me, it really is a question of privacy vs walled garden and I choose to give up some privacy.

These “features” are irrelevant to me and to most people. I don’t want rooting, hacking, adding iptables rules, etc. My hopes were that android has caller id blocking via internet databases, sms forwarding, out of box adblock, browser that is superior to safari, etc. I don’t want to stop programs or write them, to have “files” for every app to access them, to dig into the kernel things, etc. It is not a selling point at all, you just fight with your phone’s bad habits. I don’t, I needed simple things and expected at least part of the world that android users promised me everywhere, and it’s just was not there. It is not a privacy concern, these “solutions”, even paid ones, just do not work after you give up privacy.

Which is fine if you don't care about those things, I do. You said:

> Walled garden is just an anti-marketing term

Which is what I was arguing with. For me, it's a big anti feature, big enough to always choose Android over iOS. I won an iPhone at a company xmas raffle and gave it to my mother rather than keeping it. She also doesn't care about those things, so it's much better fit for her.

> you just fight with your phone’s bad habits.

No, I make my phone do what I want it to do. You accept that your phone does what Apple wants it to do. I don't like being forced to change my habits based on some 3rd parties whim.

My issue isn't that you prefer not dealing with these things, it's that you entirely dimiss the notion that someone does and that a "walled garden is just an anti-marketing term".

I am a big fan of my warranty. Anything that requires me to have to root my phone is a dealbreaker to me and (near enough to) everyone else.

You could also try GNU/Linux phones, which do not have any kind of walled garden.