Dude, who cares if rooting is as easy as jailbreaking these days. The idea of needing to hack into my iPhone just so I can get the system updates from Apple that are SUPPOSED to be on phone is just flat out ridiculous.
I will say this much. I felt like my life changed when I got my OG Motorola Droid. I was previously using a Blackberry Bold and I thought that Android was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I stuck with Androids through a few iterations and picked up the iPhone 4s when my contracts were up for work related reasons. Here, IT absolutely insists on iPhones or blackberry. I actually upgraded to the Galaxy S4 a few months ago (my father who has never owned a smartphone before had an upgrade so I used his and gave him my 4s) and will likely be going back to the 5s when it launches as he wants the S4 due to the larger screen.
You have to understand that not everyone is completely engrossed in their phones technology. To me, a phone is simply a means to get things done. It carries my appointments, and meetings. I use it to keep in touch with people and I use it to read the news, browse the web and use apps that are relevant to my field of work. Very little time is spent tinkering with the phone for tinkering sake. I did that a bunch with my Android phones, just because there was so much that was available to customize. I rooted them, used custom roms, etc. but in the end, I never found much real world utility for that much of it. The 64 bit thing doesn't mean much to the casual user, other than the knowledge that their phone is somewhat future proofed. I'm also not sure how you can really call most of Apple's upgrades "gimmicky", most of the "features" on the S4 are far more "gimmicky" than anything Apple has put out, not to mention, a lot of them are just not well executed, nor are they particularly useful. I thought that Siri would be the most useless thing in the world when I got my iPhone, but I love having it, and yes, it works better than S voice. Having used both, I have zero qualms about saying that. But as far as the S4 goes on a day to day functional level, I don't have much issue in using it, and if I cared about having a huge screen, then I would probably go for it. But as far as a phone that simply works well and that I'm comfortable with, I still prefer the iPhone. I don't really care about screen size, I like having a compact phone. Watching videos or movies on a slightly larger phone screen makes very little difference to me as I would rather go home and watch videos or movies on a giant flat screen TV. A phone not being intrusive matters more, and I simply find that a phone the size of hte S4 just gets in the way at times. Again, I do like to figure out how to use the ins and outs of my phone, and I suppose with iPhones there is less tinkering that I can do it, but for day to day usage (which is far more important to me), I find that the iPhone just has a smoother user experience and is lower maintenance. And a better experience (at least for me) that 95% of the time outweighs what I wish it had the other 5% of the time. Also, I have been having iMessage withdrawal ever since giving my 4s up. Having text messages from other iPhone users sync to my iPad and MBP makes life way easier, and given the number of people who have iPhones, this is actually a major deal.
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