> I also don't get buying Android devices at this point given that OS updates/device longevity is shorter, and iOS has basically hit feature parity with Android.
There's a few good things to think about:
Engineers still have good reasons, as Apple's App Store limitations pretty much just hamper tools power users could want. (e.g. Termux, Tasker, etc)
One other good reason is the very large catalogue of open source apps on Android. There's a lot of good quality free apps that Apple's fees, terms and the necessity of Macs to develop scare away.
Longevity kinda depends on your threat model. Of course Android devices will stop getting security updates sooner as we all know, but one extra thing to think about is that Apple does not backport new features and APIs, while Google generally does. This means that most apps on iOS are -strongly- encouraged to move their minimum supported iOS version up often.
All this to say that an iPhone that doesn't get any more OS updates will stop getting app updates very quickly, while an Android Marshmallow phone still supports the majority of apps. It's a tradeoff between OS updates vs app updates, the majority of people would care more for the latter (Though engineers would likely never keep a phone for that long, but the merit stands)
There's a few good things to think about:
Engineers still have good reasons, as Apple's App Store limitations pretty much just hamper tools power users could want. (e.g. Termux, Tasker, etc)
One other good reason is the very large catalogue of open source apps on Android. There's a lot of good quality free apps that Apple's fees, terms and the necessity of Macs to develop scare away.
Longevity kinda depends on your threat model. Of course Android devices will stop getting security updates sooner as we all know, but one extra thing to think about is that Apple does not backport new features and APIs, while Google generally does. This means that most apps on iOS are -strongly- encouraged to move their minimum supported iOS version up often. All this to say that an iPhone that doesn't get any more OS updates will stop getting app updates very quickly, while an Android Marshmallow phone still supports the majority of apps. It's a tradeoff between OS updates vs app updates, the majority of people would care more for the latter (Though engineers would likely never keep a phone for that long, but the merit stands)