The software platform Apple has built is unrivaled.
Not really true anymore. Android (while drinking Google Koolaid) is an amazing platform. I bet for most users (in terms of apps and basic phone features), there is really no justification to get an iPhone over an Android.
Android's great. You just have to spend an incredible amount of time researching the gigantic ecosystem and all the permutations of hardware and software to figure out which phone actually has the combination of good/responsive enough hardware, support for things you want to do, and comes with a recent version of the OS and magic proprietary Google bits. Then once you've put in the time doing that, the ecosystem has moved on and the phone that would have been correct to buy when you started now isn't and will probably never be updated again, because in the Android world anything that's been on the market more than three weeks is an ancient obsolete toy.
I don't understand why more people don't want to join that ecosystem!
iOS is just a better platform.
Going to have to disagree.
There are no redeeming qualities for Android. From a sloppy, disjointed user experience to an incredibly shady app store, Android doesn't compare to iOS.
That's not to say iOS doesn't have issues. It certainly does, but in terms of comparability it's not even a contest.
Luckily for Android many people really don't care about design.
As a dev. platform I'd take Android any time (and steer clear from obj c)