At issue in this matter is the question of what alternatives we have in the arena of mobile device software: We have Google, which offers both Android with the Play Services Framework and ChromeOS; the Android Open Source Project, which exists and is almost never used for anything commercial; Amazon, with FireOS (also AOSP-based but not Play Services-based) LG, which technically owns WebOS, which technically could be a mobile OS but isn't currently; straight up Linux, which ALSO isn't used for anything commercially successful on mobile; and Apple, which makes a variety of bullshit all built on derivatives of BSD Unix that can mostly all be described as iOS.
AOSP is fine and basically viable. Better than most people would guess. But Google keeps moving functionality that used to be core OS components into Play Services in order to facilitate some combination of security updates and high demand functionality. There's a struggle to replace the parts Google has yanked out, but lacking the easy update mechanisms of Android also means that it's not ideal for non-technical users.
FireOS is in many ways on par with Android, except that Amazon's app store ecosystem isn't nearly as robust. There's a lot of "brand name" software that isn't accessible by default via Amazon's app store. Amazon's devices are reasonably capable for their target price and mainly exist to sell products and consume media via Amazon Kindle, Audible, Music and Prime Video. All of that is fine, but it falls down when for example common games with actual marketing budgets aren't available on Amazon. It's just a second-rate option, and most people who are happy with FireOS probably never leave Amazon's walled garden to begin with.
Anything that lives on or is derived from Android is subsidized by advertising revenue, though. Google is the largest ad company on the planet. It has ways to monetize clicks and taps that can make their platform palatable to developers for that reason alone. A side effect of this is that there are a lot of free-with-ads products where the Apple version costs money. Users can accept the reality that developers are collecting more information about their behavior if they like, or they can install additional software to prevent that data collection.
Almost anything about Android can be changed. I appreciate this when, for example, I don't like Samsung's version of an on-screen keyboard or Motorola's contacts app. I have a tool on my phone that lets me choose which audio devices particular types of sounds play through. This is the kind of flexibility I expect from a computer I keep in my pocket.
iOS, on the other hand, often only has one way to do anything. A substantial amount of software on iOS is simply mandatory, with no cure or ability to redress. You MUST use the web rendering components of Safari, for example, even if you choose to use a Firefox skin over it. iOS is so inflexible as to be brittle, and if Apple and its cult wants to pretend it's a good guy by not sharing all the data it is collecting, or that refusing to implement useful hardware features is What's Best for Everyone, I say that it is completely unacceptable. It is at best one size fits some. Apple treats its users as children. I truly do not believe iOS should be tolerated. It is the wrong direction for software. I do not want a $1000 device that will not let me use it the way I want. The cost for that is some degree of privacy, but in truth, anyone with a debit or credit card or an insurance card or driver's license in the USA has probably already lost a massive amount of privacy in the first place, whether they voluntarily shared their personal information with Meta through their phone or not. Chances are that if they didn't, a friend or relative probably did it for them. We in the USA do not own data collected about ourselves, so any idea of privacy we had is illusory at best. This is almost certain to change for the worse in the next few years for reasons that have nothing to do with mobile ecosystems.
