that isn't all that different from getting a Pixel.

Paradox is, that with Pixel device you can get most freedom and security togather. Installation of GrapheneOS is easiest custom ROM installation that could possibly be.

At least Apple's ecosystem is genuinely better in certain ways. Everyone else wants a piece of the pie that they didn't deserve.

All of those security related screens you listed is why I like Apple: security related things are local to secure enclave, not in cloud.

I think they also provide backups

Sort of. They use SeedVault, but a bunch of apps are not backed up. When restoring another set of apps do not properly restore

It took a good while for me to figure out that a family member had inadvertently signed up for an Apple Music account that they were not using.

The point is that you have to turn off preferences and uninstall apps that come with the phone. (Samsung apps and OneDrive are mentioned.)

So you don’t have to do this, but if you don’t, you are under even more surveillance and experience more advertising.

Maybe Samsung has changed how the first boot works compared to stock Android, but this definitely has not been my experience across several Samsung devices. Also many apps store their data in different ways which doesn't always survive a device migration/backup. Only cloud-only apps have a good experience, wheras anything that stores data on device can be hit and miss depending on how easy individual apps manage its backup.

At least Samsung doesn't sync folders. Meaning: if they were organized before by topic they aren't there after syncing via their "Samsung Smart Switch Mobile" to a new Samsung phone. A lot gets synced, but it's not like an image with full DSC (desired state configuration) afterwards.

Pretty mediocre -- not totally useless, but far from a seamless experience.

The author is technical, but apparently the parents are not. “It works for me” turns into “just spy on my family members”.

For me, “impossible” isn’t the case. I’m deeply technical and could 100% run a setup like you’re describing. For me it’s, sadly, convenience and priorities. I oscillate between Linux and OS X for desktop/laptop use, have used Linux for server use for decades, have used both iOS/iPadOS and Android for tablets “in production”, and have only used Android as a secondary phone for doing development, and only iOS for primary phone use.

Convenience-wise, this is true both for the small daily stuff and large occasional stuff.

Day-to-day:

- For work I have to deal with .docx, .xlsx, .pots, and .pdf on a regular basis, both reading and authoring. Libreoffice mucks up formatting in both directions for Word documents. Web Office365 sucks in comparison to desktop O365. Linux PDF viewers are fine until you have to fill out a form and digitally sign one.

- Mechanical CAD: my team uses Fusion 360. There’s Windows and Mac versions. I haven’t tried it under Wine. I suspect it’d be painful. I’ve tried some OSS solutions. Not pleasant.

- ECAD: KiCAD has grown up and has become my primary ECAD tool. Hooray!

- Time Machine: for my Linux machines I have a great setup that pushes backups to Backblaze B2 using restic. For my current laptop, I plug an external drive in every morning and Time Machine does its magic. I also run the B2 script for off-site occasionally.

- Phone calls: OS X and iOS have fantastic hand-off. I do most of my work communication through Teams and Slack, both of which work fine on Linux. Phone calls, though... if my phone starts ringing, I get a notification on my laptop and can just click "Answer" to take the phone call through the headphones I'm already wearing.

- Clipboard integration: I actually started writing this comment on my phone and then decided to move over to my laptop. Copying it on my phone automatically put it in my clipboard to paste on my laptop.

Hardware compatibility:

- My last Linux desktop was fabulous. Happily drove a 4K display, I loved living in XFCE every day. There was one issue that was extraordinarily frustrating: if the machine sat unused for somewhere around 24-72 hours it would enter a very strange power state. The machine was still powered up to some degree, but was completely unresponsive. I could use it every day with no issue, for weeks. If I didn't use it for that 24-72h timeframe, boom, it would get into this state. This only ever happened to me while I was travelling. I did several deep debug dives into this to no avail, including at one point setting up the kernel logger to log over serial to another embedded machine. I pointed a security camera at it to see if, say, a cat or some other obvious physical thing was causing it. I ended up hooking up an Ethernet-controlled power bar so that I could power cycle it and access the data that was on it. Tried multiple kernels, many different kernel command-line options, never did get to the bottom of it.

- My older 2014 Mac Mini that sat next to it was bulletproof. I could do 98% of what I was doing with the Linux desktop machine remotely on that machine just fine. Mostly there were some embedded Linux tasks that wouldn't work well on the Mac.

OS Updates:

- My current phone (iPhone 12 Pro) is 6 years old. It's running the latest OS. You can have an experience like this with stock Android distributions if you very carefully research which vendors and specific devices use... I forget what it's called... Google One? My dev phone is a Nokia and it got updates for a long time. I don't remember when/if they stopped.

- The idea of having to custom compile or hunt down OS updates from a third party destroys the convenience of this for me. I want to spend essentially 0% of my life thinking about what to do for an OS for my phone or tablet.

- My old 10-year-old Macbook Pro finally stopped receiving updates a year or two ago. It runs Linux now quite happily. It's a fantastic Linux machine.

Occasional new device setup:

- Back to the article, the Apple "I have a new phone/iPad/laptop" story is just unbeatable. I couldn't even tell you what the steps involve because they involve virtually no thinking at all. It's roughly "hold your new device near your old device". You maybe have to log into it first. It requires no thought at all.