Originally Posted by
LordHamster
I'm a super-techie person, and I visit tech forums all the time. Honestly for the longest time the ability to "customize" was always touted by Android fans as the #1 differentiator. While it may be true, I really wonder how important that ability is. Sure you can go over to the android forums and stare in awe at people's "comic sans" system fonts, their custom icon packs, and their anime themed backgrounds.... but how representative are they of the market?
Even as a super techie user, I never once "customized" the icons or the home screen layout of any of my Android phones. I just never felt the need or desire to.
I moved from iOS to Android in about 2012 after I became disillusioned with how locked down iOS was. Back then, you could Jailbreak to get some of the functionality, but it was all a bit of a faff. Things like grouping apps together in groups, home screen widgets, VPN clients were just not possible. Going to Android was like a breath of fresh air. I'll arrange the home screen how *I* like it thank you very much. I'll have a nice weather app, and I'll have small app icons so I can see more on the main home screen without having to swipe.
I also had a Samsung tablet for years. However, last year they lost me when they moved the fingerprint reader from under the screen to the thin power button on the edge. So, I had a look at an iPad Pro (I knew I could return if I didn't like it). I was won over in about an hour. Most of my gripes from 2012 had gone away, and I could live with the gripes that were still there.
Within a couple of months I'd got the Apple Watch and the iPhone 12. I still can't customise the home screen as much as I'd like, but I can live with it. FaceId is great, and the implementation of Wallet / ApplePay is better than the slightly clunky Android versions (IMO).