Before going forward, the reason why I asked this question is to kind of see the perspective of an iPhoner. As an Androider myself, I see Apple completely different, more to the negative side of course, due to the latest BS and untruthful lawsuits.
Ive owned a few androids and I prefer iPhones mostly because the exterior looks gorgeous, I love the look of the UI, very simple, never locks up/lags, and always works. Also when jailbroken, you can customize it just like an android.
The looks are personal, so it's all up to you. But regarding the UI, Android post 2.3 (Gingerbread) is pretty much "perfect". I'm currently using a GSII with Android 4.1.1 preview edition and non official, and I've yet to have any kind of lock up or lag. What most people take as an account off old phones, is that yes, I agree, Android pre-2.2 had many issues, but people gave up there and never saw the "rest of the story" so to speak. The biggest issue with jailbrake is that, from what I've read, it's very difficult not only to perform but also to get back to stock. To root my GSII it only takes 5 seconds.
My first Android device was the HTC G1/Dream, purchased on release day, and I had been in love with Android ever since. But, that love affair has gone sour. Why? Allow me to explain.
When I turned on my HTC G1 android phone for the first time I was immediately greeted with a beautiful user interface - the buttons, the notification bar, the gradients, it was all so beautiful. I've owned several Android devices spanning Coby, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung and am currently on the HTC Evo View 4G tablet. During my Android journey I had the honor of running Android 1, Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread and, finally, Honeycomb. The user interfaces from Cupcake through Froyo were beautiful - their gradients, buttons, window animations were eye candy in every sense of the phrase.
Gingerbread brought a change, though, one that I found disappointing. The gradients and colors that I had fallen in love with were replaced with dark backgrounds and green highlights. Reminded me of something I had created decades ago with an old version of MS Paint when I was just learning how to theme software.
Honeycomb replaced the green highlights with blues but the dark "hacker" feel of the UI is still there. Honeycomb caused a further degradation in the UI due to inconsistent menu button placement.
Google seems to have continued this UI trend with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), which is simply unprofessional and somewhat painful viewing on a device that we have to stare at for the entirely of its use. What happened? The Android 1.0 UI is by far more beautiful than that of Android 4.0. Why does Google keep changing the UI forcing the user to stop what he/she is doing and learn something new?
I had never owned an Apple product, but I spent an hour on an iPad one day. Below are just some of the differences I found:
Menus:
The iOS "plus" button is always in the top right corner in every app.
Android menu buttons in Honeycomb are sometimes in the top right corner and sometimes in the button bar at the bottom of the screen depending on the app. This leads me to believe there are no standards for the UI. I felt it was very inconsistent.
UI:
The iPad is beautiful with its gradients and colors, very easy on the eyes.
The iPad has a screen resolution of 2048 x 1024 (?).
Text manipulation worked the exact same across all apps.
Android has devolved from a beautiful UI to one of 2 color, 2D and too dark.
Screen resolutions in Android change depending on which manufacturer happens to make a particular device but I haven't found one with a screen resolution similar to a new iPad.
Text manipulation in Android varies depending on which keyboard/manufacturer skin the user happens to be stuck with. There were some websites in which the copy/paste functions didn't work at all. Android screen appearance varies depending on the type of screen included in the device.
Android executes most of its code in the Dalvik Virtual Machine. And, for that reason it will never be as fast as iOS.
Hardware:
iPads and iPhones are similar. I can jump from one iPad to another and know what to expect.
Android devices ship with whatever hardware the manufacturer can acquire, meaning that some Android devices can run apps that can't even be installed on other devices.
Development:
I was an android developer and got fed up with the fragmentation. I would develop an app that would run perfectly on one android device but either couldn't be installed on another or wouldn't operate as I had intended. This constantly caused me to waste time and resources updating apps.
Support:
Apple support the iPhone for a long time.
More than once I had purchased an Android device and had it rendered EOL (End Of Life) in under a year.
Consistency:
I have several friends who own Android devices and using them is a challenge because apps on one phone won't run on another or the keyboards are too different to make typing comfortable - yet they're all stock devices. I really don't want to have to learn new ways to do something every time I use a different Android device. I feel that Apple products win in the Consistency category.
I had been with Android since day one and had created themes, apps and ROMs for this platform. But, the way Google was treating it just made me think they're really not serious about it.
In March of this year I switched to iOS. I've put my iPhone through quite a bit and it's never failed me. I'm sticking with Apple products and I'll never go back.
Firstly, very good answer, and thanks for clarifying.
What Google tried to do with 4.x+ is pretty much give the feel of "We're effing sexy and we love hacker-themes". And the majority enjoyed thoroughly. Including me. I just don't know, it just caught my eye instantly. I agree, Gingerbread was quite bland, weak, and quite "meh", but Honeycomb introduced that "hacker" feel as you said, and that's where I thought that google was going damn good. And now I'm sitting here on the 4.1.1 version, and it's really, really damn good.
Yep, I agree regarding the menus. But one of the reasons I've never encountered or will ever such problems is because I own a Samsung device (Galaxy S 2), and it has a dedicated menu button, thus eliminating that problem.
Copy/paste not working was mostly due to some sort of bug in the ROM. That was very present on the leaks of ICS on the GSII.
By the way, I've heard that Android as a whole runs entirely in a VM. Is that true, or is it run from root?
Well, depends, all apps at the moment only require 2.1. As long as you have any version from 2.1 and up, all apps will work with you.
I don't trust OEM's for support. I trust cyanogenmod for my daily dose of ROM flashing.
The issue with apple products for me is that, they just lack the "interest" in discovering new things within the device. There's always some sort of easter egg to be found... And regarding customization vs jailbrake, I believe that even with a jailbrake, the customization is still far from what Android offers. You can't replace the kernel or the bootloader ( I don't know what the iOS equivalent for that ), and all the recent Apple happenings...
