> What I don't get it... is this fanboyism, this loyalty to a company that knows you as close as a number on a spreadsheet and a dollar amount on their bank account.
I don't approve of platform fanboyism myself, but there is more to it than this. Loyalty to a platform often comes from approving of that company's particular business model and wanting to see it succeed over the others for moral reasons.
iOS fans like Apple's philosophy of "you're the customer, not the product" and deliberately not hoovering up data; Android fans like being able to load any application and change almost any setting on a device they own without a gatekeeper saying they can't. These aren't irrational things to be in favor of.
I think Android fans like the idea of total control more than the actual application of it.
Most of what I've seen are people who just change the system font.
I know there are some people out there who are doing really cool things, but they are in the minority. The majority of the fanboys are people who parrot the line but instead don't do anything "the other side" doesn't do.
I'm familiar with my ecosystem of choice, I prefer its conventions, but if you like the other, it's cool. Of course, I'm a software developer, so I have all the control I want.
I also have devices from both ecosystems, so there's that as well.
I think there’s also a big hurdle of a new thing when you’ve already spent years learning it.
A good friend of mine said, you can only convince someone to change what they’re used to if your thing is 10X better. If it’s just another alternative, you’re gonna be in for disappointment.
While that may be true for some, I think you overestimate the amount of conscious thought that goes into human behavior. Even when people have explanations for why they do something, if it's not something truly technical that only abstract conscious thought processes can produce, and if there is any emotional component, those explanations have been shown to come after the decision. The brain creates explanations for whatever it already did, and those explanations are not connected to the actual reasoning. The reason for that is the brain is itself unaware of how it arrived at the result of automatic decisions. It would have to have an additional layer monitoring its connections that would have to be larger than those connections (axons and their neurons). Monitoring is costly. Much easier to create an explanation out of thin air, using your assumptions about yourself... Consciousness is a layer on top, there is no direct control of the brain's processes. You are as surprised by your own decisions as much as the person next to you :-) (unless it's something mundane with no surprise factor for anyone)
I don't approve of platform fanboyism myself, but there is more to it than this. Loyalty to a platform often comes from approving of that company's particular business model and wanting to see it succeed over the others for moral reasons.
iOS fans like Apple's philosophy of "you're the customer, not the product" and deliberately not hoovering up data; Android fans like being able to load any application and change almost any setting on a device they own without a gatekeeper saying they can't. These aren't irrational things to be in favor of.