Why We Keep Buying Each New iPhone

Because the hassle of switching is so huge - and besides, they are designed to make you want to stay in the Apple ecosystem. Happily. JL

Geoffrey Fowler comments in the Wall Street Journal:

The dirty little secret of smartphones is that the hardware differences don’t matter much anymore (but) the benefits to switching—cheaper hardware, more open software and services—usually don’t outweigh the cost of switching. Buying an iPhone is really about getting a golden ticket to Apple Land, where all the tools to run a modern life come included.
Here’s my iPhone 6s review: If you’re already using an iPhone, chances are you’ll buy another. If not this one, then likely the next.
Why? Because the iPhone is the most ingenious trap since Facebook. FB 1.23 % Let’s call it a happy trap. Most owners—including me—love their iPhones because they’re simple and useful. But with each new iPhone, Apple makes it harder to shift our digital world to any other device. The 6s is the stickiest iPhone yet.
No doubt, Apple makes lust-worthy objects—now in rose gold!—but that’s not the only thing keeping us coming back. The dirty little secret of smartphones is that the hardware differences don’t matter much anymore, especially on pricey models. Everybody’s got a big phone with a high-res screen and fingerprint reader. In my tests, the iPhone’s camera is no longer leaps ahead. Apple trumpets features like 3D Touch, but after using an iPhone 6s, the new responsive screen hardly feels like a must-have—at least not until some killer uses come along. Buying an iPhone is really about getting a golden ticket to Apple Land, where all the tools to run a modern life come included. Your chats funnel through iMessage, vacation photos get preserved in iCloud and you shop for games, music and movies from iTunes.
Here’s a test: If someone took away all of your Apple devices and accounts, how much of your digital life could you reconstruct?
Very few Apple apps and services are available for other kinds of phones. To switch would be like packing up and moving to a new city. That’s easy enough if you’re alone, but the iPhone is as much a social network as it is a phone. To bring along everyone you care about, and every gadget you own, is more effort than most people can take on.

This isn’t about being mindless Apple sheeple. The benefits to switching—cheaper hardware, more open software and services—usually don’t outweigh the cost of switching.
Just ask anyone who’s in a modern mixed marriage…that is, living with someone who doesn’t use the same smartphone operating system. It’s a relationship strain: How do they send messages? Share contacts and directions? You could use Google GOOG 2.56 % ’s apps and services like Hangouts and Photos, but even then, everyone in the family has to agree on them.

Timeline of Apple’s services

How the “happy trap” evolved:
2003—iTunes Music Store
2007—iPhone
2008—App Store
2010—FaceTime
2010—Find My iPhone
2011—iMessage
2011—Siri
2011—Find Friends
2012—Apple Maps
2013—iCloud Keychain
2014—Apple Pay
2014—Apple Health
2015—HomeKit
2015—Apple Photos
2015—Apple Watch
2015—CarPlay

One friend of mine tried switching to Android, but text messages started getting lost in his girlfriend’s iPhone iMessage app. (iMessage is known for causing headaches to those who move to Android.) He switched back to an iPhone in a week.
Apple’s been walking us down this honeypot path for years, and it’s been very good for business. The iTunes store arrived in 2003, and for years locked our music and video onto iPods. Then came the iPhone and, in 2008, the App Store, which has the same lock-in for games and utilities.
You may not use every one, but Apple’s newest features only sweeten the pot. Apple Photos, this year’s replacement to iPhoto, can back up a lifetime of shots online—but only if you use iCloud Photo Library. Your iPhone makes your car smarter with CarPlay, but you must use Apple’s Maps. The Apple Watch is a futuristic piece of wearable tech, but it only works with an iPhone.
And now, on the iPhone 6s, there’s Live Photos, a groovy new tool for self-expression. In addition to taking a photo, it captures a three-second burst of video around it. But you guessed it: For now you can only share Live Photos with other Apple device owners. (Apple says it plans to open sharing to third parties like Facebook, but I’m not holding my breath it will come to Android’s messaging app.)
Apple executives have argued for years that their advantage is tying together hardware and software. Apple’s defenders say the iPhone’s App Store is open to most outside services—Google Maps, WhatsApp for messaging, Spotify for music, Dropbox for storage. But Apple’s betting that tightly integrating its own services into iOS makes them easier.
Apple isn’t alone in trying to lock us in. It’s just better at it. Lots of people love Samsung SSNHZ 0.00 % hardware, but the software? Not so much.

So is Apple’s happy trap a problem? Apple is giving us what we want: an indispensable tool for modern life. The grass is usually not greener outside the Apple orchard. Yet increasingly, its limitations on us are veering from helpful toward smothering.
How much allegiance does Apple really need from us? I think it’s fair to make some demands of Apple. We, the iPhone owners, should have the right:
To choose our own maps provider throughout iOS.
To play iTunes purchases on non-Apple devices like a Roku.
To choose our own cloud storage for Photos and backup.
To bring our Android friends into our iMessage families.
To allow Siri to operate non-Apple apps (not just launch them).
What else belongs on our iPhone Declaration of Independence? I want to hear your ideas. Apple took a step in the right direction by saying its new Apple Music service would be available for Android devices, though we’re still waiting to see that arrive.
Loosening Apple’s tentacles would make the iPhone even more useful. And that builds the kind of loyalty that comes from trust, not traps.