My experience pre-Uber was that cabs were never there when you need them, the cars were smelly and in bad shape, the rides were expensive, seatbelts were usually broken, and drivers were not particularly motivated to be civil, never mind kind.
I personally don't drink bottled water on principle, but in theory it's nice to know it's there if I'm suffering.
Are your local cabs just amazing? I'm open to it, but again... floored. This very well could be a regional difference.
Edit: I cannot believe that I forgot to mention that the entire taxi medallion system found in most cities was not only deeply corrupt and usually intimately connected with organized crime... but the ownership structure was such that they enabled some of the worst legal wage slavery rackets in the western world. You've had these deeply shady owners with dozens of medallions and fleets of easily replaced, mostly immigrant drivers who all seemed to be prepared to drive for decades before someday hopefully being able to buy their own car and then drive it until they die.
I share your well-deserved dislike of Uber, that's an easy sell.
Just speaking from my own experience here, it's really difficult to make a compelling case that from the customer's perspective it's just objectively nicer to take an Uber.
It's cheaper, cleaner, they will find you on quiet side streets, and yes, the evil water bottles are there if you want them.
I just wish that there was a more societally beneficial third option, since VR telepresence hasn't taken off outside of the furry raver community.
I think both of you are right but looking at different sections of the trend.
In general, taxi business is very tough and tend to became worse over time due to the systems in play.
Old taxi services quality varied widely, i.e. in some areas they went into shit already while in some they were still great.
Living in a big city with pretty lax taxi regulations I experienced whole range with some providers being top quality.
Uber injected billions into the market attracting a whole lot of new people to start doing taxi gigs, which made quality much better for some regions where regular taxi was already bad, but overall, the taxi business model was not changed much if at all.
When the free money dried out, and it became obvious that uber will not be able to transition into self-driving taxi service, the quality of their service starts going to shit everywhere.
In my city, local taxies developed their own apps which are not much worse than uber, some continue to provide old style service, and uber became the provider with the lowest quality.
In my opinion, Uber business model is based on the fact that “gig workers” cannot calculate the proper amortization cost of the vehicle, so when the time goes by, companies who do know how to calculate the proper costs provide better service.
Taxis were great, for both the consumer and Taxi driver.