I think you have to acknowledge that you're part of a very specialized user group, and that your goals and requirements are very different from the general popu

I think you have to acknowledge that you're part of a very specialized user group, and that your goals and requirements are very different from the general population. Is Apple to sell phones to you, or to the general population? Answer is obvious, isn't it? For the general population, making a tightly controlled (and simple) hardware and software environment makes more things possible -- overall -- to the users than absolute freedom does. It's a paradox -- by controlling things, they set the market for this product loose. You can see how it is a hard thing to manage to, and leads to users like you being unhappy. Linux gives incredible freedom to users, yet has very little market penetration. Not everyone wants to be able to side load apps, tweak their battery charging settings, and have their phone die because they did something wrong to it.