When I have conversations with non techy friends and introduce them to my take on the privacy and consumer rights issues, and they take the time to look into the problems and think about it, they've almost always come back and said the costs in loss of rights, market diversity, ecological impacts, or simply in dollars, are not worth the value provided by huge companies like Apple and Google.
They both ruthlessly squash competition and innovation that threaten their bottom lines, but somehow project wholesome images as innovation engines and friends of consumers. They both ruthlessly exploit employees and partners, while somehow appearing to be wholesome and desirous places of employment.
They're both soulless megacorps with institutional algorithms that prevent any threat to the control over a domain of profit. When such institutions arise, outside the control of any human or group of humans in the loop, they should be forcibly broken up. That level of power and influence belongs in the hands of people, not inhuman constructs.
I've been an iOS and Android developer—as in, paid to do it. Was an Android phone user before doing any mobile dev. Finally got my hands on IIRC a 3rd-generation Surface at work a few years back, as a test device.
Having extensive experience with the competition, I now choose Apple phones and tablets for a few reasons, functionality very much among them.
I doubt most "technologists" care about writing code for their phone to begin with, and I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access". That doesn't mean I think most "technologists" would pick Apple (I really don't know) but I don't think I'm the outlier here, preferences-wise, even if I am on which platform I choose.
> Having better photo sharing and phone call capabilities, less device restarts
Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing? I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible (it seems entirely fine?) and I just don't know it. Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?
> the ability to caption audio for times when having the speaker on is inconvenient or not loud enough
That is cool. Not something I'd use personally, but it's cool.
> supporting restricted guest accounts are also features that
Account management is my biggest complaint about I-devices. Mostly the iPad—I don't really care if iPhones continue to have only two modes (full, and PIN-restricted "screen time" mode—which I don't use anyway, so I wouldn't mind if that disappeared, really) but true multi-account would be great on the iPad.
> most people who don't worry as much about fashion would not want to give up.
Hahahaha.
I program my computing devices constantly, and with my phone being a computing device I have near me almost all the time, I naturally program that as well.
> I don't know what you mean by "non-buggy web access".
Webkit is extremely buggy and the only supported way to access the web on iOS. On other platforms, if one engine is buggy, I can use another.
> Photo sharing's never been a problem—what am I missing?
Uploading photos to your server in the background.
> I don't talk on the phone much so maybe that's actually terrible
You can't route calls through other services, you can't record calls (which the first makes trivially possible), you can't have your phone answer the call for you and show you a realtime transcription or save the transcription for later viewing, you can't have the phone wait on hold for you, etc. The iPhone is extremely limited as a phone.
> Device restarts? How often do you think I restart my iOS devices?
Every single time you need to update a system app.