About 2 days ago, I discovered from my closet, my very first old and abandoned HTC Desire (The OEM version of the very first Nexus One). Powered it on, updated to Android 2.3 (Last official update) and I thought heck, I wonder if this thing is still usable.
So, I carried it along with my iPhone for the next few days. Remember, this phone was purchased sometime in 2010. So, I was assuming the battery was probably dead. But, to my pleasant surprise. It wasn't. But,even if it was, no biggie, I realized it was replaceable. Then, I had the phone throw a bunch of insufficient space errors on me. I was so used to the Apple eco-system that I just thought I should delete some existing apps to make some space on my phone. And in this process, I discovered that I could actually expand my storage by purchasing a new memory card for just ~$5 because the desire has a provision for adding a memory card and transferring all my apps and their data to the SD card. Cool!
Now, to the most interesting part. The software. In my experience, when I turned it on, I had to re-auth some of my previous Google accounts and from there, pretty much everything just worked. I didn't notice even a single crash in my entire 1 week heavy usage with this phone. What a pleasant surprise. What was even more relaxing was that, when I opened the music app and played a song, the music just played! I was so invested into Apple's ecosystem of iTunes Match and Apple Music and deluded by them that I didn't realize that I was being shoved with a poor user experience under the guise of subscribing to a premium music service.
For example, on my android, I have a playlist X. I click on track A. In just under a second the song starts playing. I can do this while my phone is still in my pocket just using the remote on the headset. On my iPhone, I click on a track A under playlist X (also using remote) and in my mind, I'm actually quite anxious if this thing will start playing immediately or if it will get stuck waiting to download the track from the cloud forcing me to take my phone out and close the music app, open it, evade the Apple music interface I want to avoid, select my playlist from the playlist tab and find the track I want to play again. What a nightmare. What's worse is my whole phone freezes when using certain apps and sometimes I'm forced to restart it. On the HTC I had to do this absolutely 0 times in the same time period.
When we buy a smartphone, we buy it assuming certain basic use cases - Make calls, listen to music, take pictures. If your smartphone can't even fulfil these basic needs, especially when you charge a premium, then something is seriously wrong with you.
Despite being a 6 year old discarded device, my android phone is far more stable than my current iPhone. It actually came as quite a shock to me. I have some devices still on iOS7 and they're definitely quite not stable enough. This made me realize my original point - Apple's focus has been too much on just pushing updates rather than on stability. This gives you the illusion that you're innovating faster than the others when in reality it isn't.
The reason I took time to explain my experience is not because I want to start some kind of iPhone vs Android flame war, nor suggest that Apple is dying, etc. etc. nor that we all should be buying Androids (I still find iPhone has an edge for my use case, infact).
I just simply want to demonstrate how a company whose selling point is "Everything just works" has consistently failed to deliver and yet how we (atleast me) still been thinking they're the superior ones.