I also fell into the Mac ecosystem back when OSX 10.1 & 10.2 came out. A reliable system that was actually innovative and looked nice! Runs on Unix, similar to the rock solid freeBSD I’d been in the process of exploring! Difficult to hack, fast, easy to program!
Then the changes started. Someone put a fresh out of the box Mac on the internet, “if you can hack this machine, it’s yours!”. I think they popped it in about 30 minutes.
You couldn’t get into certain areas of the OS any longer, by design of apple.
Before you know it, you have a sports car of a computer or phone, but it won’t go where you want it to. That’s why I refuse to get in.
All to say: android has some pretty rough edges, but with graphene or my preference CalyxOS, you have hardware that’s fast, as secure as you decide you want it to be (with the added inconvenience that can add) and for less than you’d pay for your parent’s gilded cage. If you’d like, a good counterpoint to your dad’s “security” claim is the fact that Android code is fully visible for all to see.
If you’d like to maintain quality video/voice calls that are also fully encrypted in an open-source manner between Android and Apple, I’ve got my family using Signal messenger. Just to avoid that irritating ‘blue/green bubble’ discussion.
Good luck to you in your future endeavours, you don’t have to win every fight, you only have so much energy. But do talk and research the points that matter to you, including being free to use the hardware you paid for as you personally deem fit.
