2) I almost fell over laughing when you mentioned a whole "40" hours. I think if I went through that whole process with Apple, I'd be happy if I got it out of the way in 40 hours.
Apple "used to" (as in, they cast a damn good image of) following Dieter Rams type of design philosophy, but that's long gone in the freak show app-orgy that exists within iOS now. It's a mess, it's terribly disorganized, it's not "less, but better" it's "more, and worse".
Personally, I'm surprised that they let iOS get this stale. But apparently as long as the penumbra of Steve's[RIP] reality distortion field exists, they will blindly march on.
What Apple needs is a new visionary. Not someone to try to emulate Steve Jobs. And they need to open the hell out of their products.
If you believe your hardware and OS are best, then open the hardware to letting people install Android on it if they don't agree, and write a version of iOS to run on other hardware.
It's not going to happen (and I hope they prove me wrong). Apple is designed as a coupled HW-SW ship, and I don't see them changing course any time soon.
My advice: Pay attention to your perspective bed partners before you commit and get into bed with them.