Fragmentation lowers the quality of the product. Apple has consistently made a design choice with the iPhone to shoot for quality rather than freedom, and evidently a lot of people like that tradeoff.
Maybe it doesn't have to be a tradeoff. But until all major carriers are selling an unlocked, rooted Android phone with guaranteed long-term OS updates with build quality and software stability as good as the iPhone, I'm going to continue to defend the idea that Apple's design choices are a perfectly valid set of tradeoffs to bring to market.
Some people (myself included) love Apple products because Apple's abstractions don't leak (much). If my grandmother has to be aware of the fact that she's using a "browser" with a "rendering engine," much less understand which one or which version, Apple has no UX advantage.
Maybe it doesn't have to be a tradeoff. But until all major carriers are selling an unlocked, rooted Android phone with guaranteed long-term OS updates with build quality and software stability as good as the iPhone, I'm going to continue to defend the idea that Apple's design choices are a perfectly valid set of tradeoffs to bring to market.
Some people (myself included) love Apple products because Apple's abstractions don't leak (much). If my grandmother has to be aware of the fact that she's using a "browser" with a "rendering engine," much less understand which one or which version, Apple has no UX advantage.