>Are you arguing people can't easily switch between ios and android?
I mean... yes? Even just affording a new handset could be prohibitive if you want a parity of hardware features. But also, we shouldn't underrate the barrier presented to nontechnical users by having to learn a new interface, especially when Apple banks so hard on its (superficial) reputation for Just Working. I think we all know some (especially, but not exclusively, older) people who have just attained a sense of bare competency at driving their iPhones and will invite you to pull that from their cold dead hands.
There's a lot more than just free apps to consider in this scenario.
Paid apps will have to be re-purchased, your Airpods won't work as well, your Apple Watch won't work at all with Android, you won't be able to message your contacts who use iMessage without SMS, etc.
iPhone owners tend to buy into the Apple ecosystem which ends up being a whole bunch of vendor lock in, and it becomes unreasonable to switch platforms. The ability to switch to Android certainly doesn't give Apple a free pass here.
Why would you expect proprietary tech to work with anything, though.
That’s what I don’t get - people buy locked down stuff and then complain that it’s locked down. There are plenty of alternatives that aren’t locked down.
The defeatist mentality from my perspective is arguing that we shouldn't try to make locked down stuff less locked down.
And in many cases, you don't have a choice to use Signal or etc.
What if all your contacts are using iMessage? Sure, most of them will have SMS, but that's not guaranteed. There will always be edge cases of users who are locked in due to situations outside of their control. Shouldn't we be trying to make things less locked down for them?
The people I want to communicate with don't have Signal or any other messaging app. They have iMessage, which only allows you to communicate effectively with other apple devices.
Like what? Blackberry OS and Windows Phone are dead. There aren't any feasible smartphone platforms out there besides iOS and Android, unless you think your average consumer should be buying a Pinephone or something (and I wouldn't consider that anywhere close to feasible anyways).
Installing Windows on an Apple laptop is easy. There's no real reason it couldn't be easy to install Android on an iPhone. Apple has spent a lot of time building software controls to make it impossible, and sues people who try. It's really not asking that much of Apple here - they would save money if they stopped trying to make it artificially difficult to switch from iOS to Android.
That's right! Just throw out your iPhone, re-buy every app and any digital content you've ever bought for it, and switch to Android! It's easy!
This is like arguing that Microsoft wasn't monopolistic in the 90s because Linux existed.