They didn't say people are gouged by phones. They said:
>You either consent to being exploited by Google, or you pay a pound of flesh to Apple.
Meaning you're in camp 1, unless you've run lineageos or something similar. Also if you're just on the regular os, a $180 phone from 2016 probably doesn't get security updates at this point.
It never cost anything close to $180 though. That was my point: a phone that cost that little in 2016 was probably an older android and is unlikely to have current software support.
I got burned by Android being out of date (insecure) because my phone had to be updated by the carrier. I was royally pissed that neither the manufacturer of the phone nor my phone provider was taking ownership-- of the thing they took ownership of by not supporting vanilla Android to begin with-- and leaving me with an insecure device on their network.
I hate this attitude. My super cheap budget android phone isn't getting updates, obviously the only solution is to switch to an iPhone that costs 4 times as much. Never mind that there are also Android phones that get updated just as long for the same price as the iPhone. Clearly all Android devices are absolutely identical no matter the price.
>You either consent to being exploited by Google, or you pay a pound of flesh to Apple.
Meaning you're in camp 1, unless you've run lineageos or something similar. Also if you're just on the regular os, a $180 phone from 2016 probably doesn't get security updates at this point.