The problem with the argument is that it conflates choice with consistency. What every mobile vendor including Apple is principally attempting to do is to creat

The problem with the argument is that it conflates choice with consistency. What every mobile vendor including Apple is principally attempting to do is to create a feature which a user will miss if they switch away, and for a lot of people Android wins because choice is a feature you'll lose or restrict on iOS. I agree that a lot of time has been wasted by Android vendors on differentiation for differentiations sake. It's easier to superficially fuck with the UI than actually create a useful features. I'm a great believer in Loss Aversion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion) and Hotelling's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law) when it comes to device preferences. These days I don't think many people are arguing that the iOS UI is significantly better than stock Android, Android has closed the gap or jumped beyond iOS depending on your personal preferences (Hotelling's law). Then consider how many people won't even consider iPhones because the screen size is too small (loss aversion).