For many it absolutely is. It's vi vs emacs on steroids - a bunch of very technical people debating intricacies the general population is either unaware of or doesn't care about.
> You are making incorrect assumptions in a discussion and don't like to be corrected.
Naturally I don't think I am and I get corrected all of the time. It happens. Overall I think what happens in these kinds of discussions is the general tendency for HN users to live in very small technical bubbles, often very far removed from the general population. Generally this is a very good thing and it's one of the reasons we like and appreciate HN.
However, we're a tiny portion of the population. My viewpoint here is an attempt to put on my "Joe average walking down the street" hat. I understand what you are saying, I do understand how it works, but for the vast majority of the market these distinctions don't really matter. There is data all over the place that shows huge portions of the iOS user base running the latest iOS release within days of release. This is a result of the iron-fisted domination and control Apple exerts over its users. Sure, we don't appreciate that but clearly a substantial portion of the market does - and the actual data backs it up.
As I noted, all one needs to do is look at a fragmentation chart representing real world Android vs iOS users/devices to see how this manifests in the real world for the overwhelming majority of the user base of these devices.
At every organization I've been in that develops mobile applications when you talk to the Android team vs the iOS team the Android team is constantly grumbling and running into problems supporting the bewildering array of Android devices, screen sizes, releases, etc. Sure this applies to iOS devices as well but it's a night and day difference. It's actually one of the many reasons iOS tends to be the "lead" platform for new applications - they're early and they just don't want to deal with it yet. You can target and test on a handful of devices and releases and push an iOS app with some confidence it's going to "just work" on the large majority of devices with access to the App Store.