>>If those were my only device choices, the decision would be easy. Apple, hands down.

I'm in a household swarming with both Android and Apple devices. People under the age of 30 use Apple alone, not least because the school requires it (smart move, Apple). I use Windows for Grandpa boxes, Linux for servers and Android for devices. Wife uses Windows and Apple. The reason I use Android is because I can buy devices out of China with 2 SIM cards that function at once. Wonderful feature, not possible from proprietary OS from other vendors. But technology comes and goes: within 5 years the SIM card will be an international multifunction dude biometrically tied to its owner so we can phone, browse, pay, play without even thinking about it until we see the micropayment bill. The current trend towards bigger screens etc increasingly will be independent of the tiny personal devices we carry with us. It's begun- no doubt you've seen AirPlay that eliminates one of the biggest objections to personal devices replacing PCs. With enough screens around the place e.g. in university libraries, that's the end of the PC.

BTW, neither Microsoft nor Google scans my email because I don't use their optional email services. If you don't want your e-mail snooped you need something European like Gandi Mail, or host you own SMTP server which is really very easy on Linux... though unless your recipient accepts encrypted email it's out in the wild in the clear no matter what service you use. You could try something like ZixMail but that can be a pita for your recipient. Seems to me most people shrug and accept that privacy isn't as important as we used to think, an error that no doubt will come home to roost in due course.

Nor do I get ads pushed to me, except via Amazon and NewEgg because I want those ones. Everything else is filtered by Adblock, Ghostery and Thunderbird which is pretty standard if you use Mozilla.