I’ve been using Android since 2009, so I’m always curious what Apple’s cooking up. With iOS getting its biggest redesign yet (that new “liquid glass” look) and the iPhone 17 Pro finally getting a fresh design, I went all-in on the iPhone 17 Pro Max in that iconic orange and daily’d it for a month. The first thing I tried to do was my usual routine: customize the living daylights out of it—widgets, icons, wallpapers, the whole nine yards. And yeah… iOS still makes this way harder than it needs to be. I ended up using Widgy for proper custom widgets (Aqua’s Legacy is insanely good) and a Shortcuts loophole for icon “packs,” plus Vellum for wallpapers, and I got it looking genuinely clean—just with way more effort (and money) than it would’ve taken on Android. Beyond customization, I break down what iOS actually does better: a more expressive lock screen, smarter notification prioritization/summaries (when it works), a more flexible Control Center, and the action button (the extra camera control button felt pointless to me). Hardware-wise, the cameras are phenomenal, video stabilization is next level, performance is ridiculously smooth, and battery/standby time is excellent—though charging is only ~40W and there’s no reverse wireless charging. But after a month, I couldn’t make the switch: multitasking is terrible, file management is still a mess, Apple Intelligence feels halfbaked, and overall iOS just made me feel limited—especially for a $1,200 phone.