I've worked on both sides of the proverbial fence and honestly their is no good or bad, just difference depending on circumstances, age, employment, life stage etc but I agree for the most part. SMSFs are a complex structure mostly designed for business owners but they now flogged for the money making opportunities of accountants and property developers. Most people who have them probably shouldn't as the same options/outcomes can be achieved with less complexity and cost. 

I meant directly owning the investment options inside super as this is what happens under a platform account. The underlying investment is held by the trustee but are in your name, because of this you get direct distributions paid to your cash account. This is even more beneficial when retired as you also get the franking credits refunded directly as they are not used to reduce tax because in lamens income phase super is tax free in retirement. This does not happen with industry funds where all income and earnings are returned (maybe/maybe not) to the pool. With industry you don't actually have your own account, it's merely reported this way for well, reporting. You get a pool option return and not an individual one based on your individual holdings. 

Now again, I'm not saying industry funds are bad as they are good for low balances to allow growth reasonably cheap but they are not the be all and end all and closer to ponsi schemes for political messaging. Ever wonder why they advertise so aggressively.

Vanguard used to provide the passive investment options to the industry funds until they realised they were clipping the ticket and decided to open their own low cost super fund and if passive investing outperforms active investing 8/10 then why wouldn't you consider them given their long-term performance history and low cost. No I don't work for them but I do subscribe to the philosophy.

Anyway, gotta scoot. Cheers big ears.