This was clear as day over 10 years ago, and is just as clear today.
Back in the early days of iPhone vs Android, there was a huge meme of iPhone users praising Apple for "inventing" features that Android had years ago [0]. I remember (but can't find right now) a screenshot of a conversation of an iPhone user all happy about iPhone getting SwiftKey and then saying "When is Android getting this? XD" and the other person responding with "About 4 years ago".
While the meme of "iPhone is better than Android because iPhone can do X" while Android has been able to do X for over 2 years no longer applies, there's still the meme that iPhone is somehow still a superior device. Apple has somehow convinced people that the iPhone is a luxury device, and there are some iPhone users that look down on Android users and think that Android is for people that can't afford iPhone, even though flagship Androids cost just as much.
It's just personal preference these days. I can't stand Apple's walled garden approach, but people that have multiple devices (laptop, tablet, phone, watch, etc) love it since it guarantees compatibility and functionality.
Similarly to that, I saw people in awe that when you receive a token via SMS on iPhone it allows you to copy it without opening the message. Something that Android also already had since before. In Android's case it even writes it on the app automatically without the need to do anything at all
AirDrop?
Handoff?
Fully encrypted iCloud storage, a first-of-its-kind offering that no other mass market OEM has been able to match?
Apple pay leading the market and getting mobile vendors to literally adopt contactless payments for the first time?
Mobile video chat that took Google years to replicate?
The list goes on. I don't know how one could say their software isn't powerful. It is.
To me it's the fact that it just works and I use it as a smart phone and not as a General Purpose Computer. There is a lot of ecosystem stuff on iOS that are just missing from Android. Plus the skinning of each manufacturer is/was terrible. Samsung's early TouchWiz was incredibly terrible...
I also use Android when I need more access to different things e.g. portable pocket pc that runs Linux.
I've launched Android based hardware products, I should be as Android deep as anyone can be and I use an iPhone.
"iPhone is better than Android because iPhone can do X" was never why anyone used iPhones. iPhones generally did things years later than Android but did them significantly better.
And Apple didn't need to convince people, they straight up were luxury devices compared to decay prone Android devices. Android lagged in locking down background services so battery would worsen over time as random apps did random garbage in the background. Lots of devices had weird eMMC and virtual FS bugs that'd also slow them down over time. And for a truly embarrassing length of history, top apps for things like flashlights would install lock screen ads on your device.
I agree it's more personal preference these days, but that's mostly because Google went and copied Apple's walled garden approach. Things power users loved got gutted, more and more core functionality became part of Google Play Services that vendors aren't allowed to modify. Because of Project Mainline even the Android runtime is about to start getting updated via Google Play.
This was clear as day over 10 years ago, and is just as clear today.
Back in the early days of iPhone vs Android, there was a huge meme of iPhone users praising Apple for "inventing" features that Android had years ago [0]. I remember (but can't find right now) a screenshot of a conversation of an iPhone user all happy about iPhone getting SwiftKey and then saying "When is Android getting this? XD" and the other person responding with "About 4 years ago".
While the meme of "iPhone is better than Android because iPhone can do X" while Android has been able to do X for over 2 years no longer applies, there's still the meme that iPhone is somehow still a superior device. Apple has somehow convinced people that the iPhone is a luxury device, and there are some iPhone users that look down on Android users and think that Android is for people that can't afford iPhone, even though flagship Androids cost just as much.
It's just personal preference these days. I can't stand Apple's walled garden approach, but people that have multiple devices (laptop, tablet, phone, watch, etc) love it since it guarantees compatibility and functionality.
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/9V2Vr