Bboy AJ said:
Feeling "locked in" to an OS is a pretty stupid reason to stick with a phone, IMO. Fortunately, it's the iPhone so it's still the best one out there. You're locked in a paradise.
I think Apple has been very shrewd about this lock-in idea. I feel kinda silly for being as dependent upon their infrastructure as I am now. I know that to switch platforms, the destination platform would have to perfectly duplicate and import:
1. iTunes - Both shopping and importing music, tagging and rating, and allowing me to go out and buy movies that have digital copies will work with all of my devices by sticking in the disc and putting in a single code.
2. App Store - An answer to every productivity app that I own and a demonstrated support history for each.
3. iPhoto - face mapping, rating, geotagging, smart albums (show me photos of just kid A at Disneyworld without having had to explicitly input that data) and seemless syncing to each device (based upon smart albums).
4. iBooks - This is Apple's weakest pillar by far, but I've got a sizeable iBook inventory now, and the kids love the iPad.
5. Backup - Demonstrated and supported ability to effortlessly backup all data and be able to retrieve it from device to device... (and by extension, some analog to my Time Capsule)
6. iCloud - I am going to get 10 times more locked in if/when developers adopt iCloud API. If they can get the game/document syncing working across all devices like it does in the beta (i.e. Play a round in Plants vs. Zombies while I'm out, and when I play it at home on the iPad, it picks up where I left off). Who knows if this will take off.
I know that analogs exist for every single one of these bullet points, but to date, I don't think that they all work as seemlessly as it seems to work in the iOS ecosystem. Plus, the new system will have to do this with two different accounts and 4 different sets of devices for the family.