My allegiances? Whatever do you mean?

Android has a lot of features that iOS is lacking. I honestly can't think of a single thing iOS has that Android didn't since 2.3. Don't give me Siri and all that, because you could get voice software from the market. Siri is just a voice recognition software hooked up to Wolfram Alpha. And, honestly, that's not as big of a deal as people claim. Everyone I know who has a 4S played with Siri for a day, then never used it again. No exceptions. When I get Jellybean myself, I'll certainly play with the voice commander for a bit, then never touch it again. It just isn't useful. Plus, these speech analyzers suck. Siri has no idea what you're talking at least half of the time. Jellybean's (official Google search app) is apparently better at this, but it's still not perfect, and, like I said, even if it were perfect, nobody would use it, because it's not useful.

You're the master of misquotation it seems. I purposefully did not say "better". I said "more powerful", meaning Gingerbread can do everything iOS5 can, and then some. I understand that the two systems have adopted substantially different paradigms, but I have a problem with neither: I have never said that I was against closed or open ecosystems.

I'll give you the nod with the Android fragmentation issue. Although that can be easily fixed with custom ROMs. I understand some people don't want to do that though, and, thus, we have the problem. This problem, it must be noted, is the result of the open nature of Android. Google surrendered control to the manufacturers and carriers; Nexus devices themselves get the updates ridiculously quickly. But it's also not true that Apple has a perfect solution. I know people whose 3GS phones became incredibly slow and laggy once the iOS5 update rolled in.

I already admitted that Google took some inspiration from Apple. Even still, the original iPhone and Android's UIs were noticeably different. In fact, Android looked more like desktop operating system, with its homescreens and widgets. Is that a wrong practice? Hell no. Everyone does it, and everyone benefits. "Borrow and improve." Sounds good, doesn't it? Steve Jobs himself said that, "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

We agree on the bolded; and somewhat agree on the italicized. Apple was mad? They have a right to be; they don't have a right to force others to give them compensatory cookies for that though. Some Android users were mad when iOS took some ideas from their OS. Google itself, however, wasn't. Although I have no idea where you got that Google was a partner who received early prototypes from. Source?

And I'd argue that I still think the Android notification system is still slightly subpar, particularly on phones (their tablet implementation in Honeycomb was quite good, I think). WebOS was on the right track with their notifications and I think iOSes' notifications are better than Android (speaking as someone who owns an iPad, an iPod, a Gingerbread phone, and spent the weekend setting up an ICS phone, which I recommended to my father). Virtually no useful information past "this thing exists" is in the phone notification window. I think Apple's system of displaying relevant information at the top of the screen (and quickly rolling it off the screen entirely) is superior and, again, it's much like what WebOS was doing in 2009. Not to mention that iOS shows notifications on the lock screen, which is nice.

Remember that this argument started by you saying that Apple ripped off Android's notifications. I still disagree. They both stole some elements from WebOS and Android still hasn't gotten it right, IMO. Too many people are putting too much stock in "THE NOTIFICATIONS PULL DOWN!!1!!" instead of looking at the actual content and implementation. WebOS displayed their notifications on the bottom and whether the things appear at the top or bottom of the screen is irrelevant. What's important is how they display and what information is given to the user.

It's an assumption that Google was involved in early iOS development. After all, the device launched with integrated Google services. It's unlikely that Apple did that all by their lonesome and almost surely turned to Google for help with its development.

In any case, this argument is going nowhere. You accuse me of being vague and then take offense when I "misquote" your statement that "if you look at the state of these two systems now, Android is miles ahead."

How is one supposed to take that comment? We can run around all day arguing semantics but I have other things to do. Enjoy your phone.

You are probably right, but that does seem odd being that a lot of Apple's success seems to come from people thining that they're not a big "mean" corporation.