[Prestidigitweeze]

Brand wars are a distraction. They're the colors worn by gladiators in the Roman coliseum of consumerism.

With all due respect: If =X= would stop using the word fanboy and monkeyluis would stop talking about members' attitudes and focus on the content of their ideas, perhaps we could get back to the friendly tone and informed content that made me like MobileRead in the first place.

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Both Android and iOS have potential exposure to malware. However, the Android Market is less rigorously policed than the App Market, which I consider a virtue more than a failing.

The other day, I noticed my battery was being run down and the top left corner of my notifications pull-down spammed. A survey of running apps showed the culprit to be "Galaxy SII+," a skin for Launcher Pro (one of several desktop customization overlays available for Android) which I'd downloaded from the Android Market.

My mistake. I swiftly uninstalled it, flagged its product page as harmful and returned to decent battery life and an ad-free UI.

Then I enjoyed free tethering by means of an app called Wifi Tether, available from the Android Market for the past year at least until carriers made them take it down. That one app has saved me an incredible amount of money and I've seen nothing like it within the Apple ecosystem. Does the iPhone have GoogleTalk yet? That's another money-saver.

iOS's main strengths are its smoothness, uniformity of purpose, seamless design from software to hardware, and (for me) mandatory niche support due to Apple's decades of being the primary platform of professional artists, filmmakers and musicians in the United States.

Android is buggy but open, jerky but customizable, vulnerable but inclusive. It's the pulp science fiction novel with great ideas, the Paris of the Twentieth Century of mobile operating systems. As such, I find it more exciting and less restrictive.

But remember: Google is the slave of advertising, which is one of the reasons they want to replace our internal drives with the Cloud. Neither Google nor Apple takes the motto "don't be evil" seriously, and that useful free space on Google servers has always had a purpose, just like Apple's integration.

Each OS has its place. May everyone get the chance to enjoy them both on the best hardware available.