Other than blue bubbles, why do you use iPhone?
Yes, I'm the one in the group DM that turns the bubbles green, I'm sorry.
But other than that, I don't hear many other reasons why people actually prefer iPhones over Androids. What other reasons are there?
OS updates. It’s frustrating to buy a top of the line android phone just for it to be forgotten by the manufacturer in 6-8 months.
Pixels give you 5 years now same as iphone.
iPhone gets you more like 10 years of security updates
https://www.makeuseof.com/apple-security-updates-for-10-year-old-devices/
Also, custom ROMs are great on supported phones, even after the official OTAs gone
This used to be a huge issue for me, but the last couple of Samsung phones I bought they kept them pretty well supported for years.
I switched to iPhone because I was the last in the family thread and was ruining it for everyone's bubbles, and the iPhone mini is just a great size, the android phones I liked just kept getting a bit bigger and bigger to the point that it bothered me.
This was a huge reason for my switch from Android to Apple. Years ago i ran custom ROMs but i found myself spending far too much time flashing updates, and forgetting to backup data and wiping something important.
My s21 is still getting OS updates.
This right here. Lifelong Android user that switched to the iPhone 14 and never looked back.
Edit: iPhone 13, not 14, my bad.
My problem with Apple is that everything's designed to interoperate with other Apple stuff, and nothing else. It feels like a walled garden that doesn't just keep users in, but also keeps those of us out who might want to try a single Apple device without spending many thousands replacing our entire ecosystem.
It’s funny you say that with the 14 that came out less than a year ago :)
Although I made the same jump with the 12 so I do agree.
I’d rather be tracked by apple than google.
because Apple is going to use your data to a less nefarious end? I don't get it.
That’s my belief. They don’t derive revenue from their users data, they get it through hardware sales and service subscriptions. Google has proven that they will monetize their users data in not so pleasant ways. I like Google products a lot but don’t use them because of their business practices overall
It’s been proven in court that Apple refuses to decrypt locked iPhones or messages
You can degoogle your android phone. There are ROMs/OSs which are free from tracking.
Apple’s tracking has also proven to be far less severe than Google’s through Google Play Services on Android. And much easier to opt out of
I’m responsible for supporting the phones for my family and my wife’s office. When smartphones became available, the iPhones seemed much easier to support with my non-tech-savvy user base then Android and I’ve stuck with that ever since.
I've had to support both in my family, apple has consistently been more of a pain. They're almost impossible to fix when they'd decide to start breaking or doing weird things. Every android is an easy fix, and no matter how bad they get there is always a fix. With apple after almost any point it's "send it in and pay for a repair or buy a new one", just like apple designs them to do.
Google doesn’t have vision or taste in my opinion. They released a million messaging apps and STILL haven’t made a decent one. Its been how many years and they still use SMS on most androids and people have to rely on whatsapp, a Fcaebook app… now they’re releasing their new “standard” RCS which has competing versions some with end to end encryption by default and some without.
They STILL don’t have a FaceTime alternative unless you use whatsapp…
Google knows how to show ads and everything else has so little passion and vision i dont trust any of their services because they love to kill their products
I don't even use any Apple products, but I still gotta agree with all this.
How they didn't do an iMessage style client better than Apple given the fact Hangouts was right there and superior in every way for so long is just.... bleh.
Google is losing it. Android is losing more nerd functionality and just copying iOS... but poorly. YouTube Music was better as Google Play Music. "Chats" was better as Hangouts. Where Google Fi at? Where Google Fibre gone? How's Google+ going?
Even their search results are mostly spam now.
-- Sent from my Pixel
My counterpoint is that you have to use WhatsApp (I rather use Signal) because iMessage is Apple only. SMS and RCS are stupid. With Signal you can reach users of all devices. Having a messaging protocol that depends on the device used is stupid. And hopefully the EU can end the vendor lock in with messaging apps as well.
Another vote for signal
I understand the "taste" argument, but personally the goal of not having a corporation man-in-the-middle everything I do takes priority. I degoogle my phone to the best of my ability.
Unfortunately, good vision and design takes funding, and there's not a lot of money to be made from not taking advantage of users.
Isn't Google Meet (previously Duo) kinda like FaceTime?
The fact that most people cant answer that is the problem. More people have android phones than iphones yet everyone knows FaceTime and no one knows a name for video calling on android phones. Android users dont have a culture to video calling where as people with iphones casually facetime eachother instead of doing phone calls.
They last (rocking a solid 4 year old phone)
They are rugged
The 3rd party apps are better
The interoperability with other Apple products is great
They are fast enough
Great accessory market
I’m familiar with the os
The os works well enough for my needs
Privacy - I am not the product
I agree except for third party apps. I used the iphone 12 for about a year before I switched back to android. Now I have an iPhone for my work phone and an android for my personal. Yes, some third party apps are better supported. But in my experience, it's only the big name ones. When you start getting into "indie" apps, I think android wins. The number of time I have tried to do something with my iPhone only to discover I can't is way too high.
And it's usually small things that add up over time. For instance, I use Alarmy for my alarm. With android, you can have the app lock down the phone. You must turn off the alarm the designed way (photos, barcodes, math, etc. It's a really cool app and I highly recommend it). If you try to close it out, it'll start itself again and start alarming. But with iPhone, I can close the app and the alarm goes away and won't ring again. It made it pretty useless when I could still just dismiss the app anyway.
Wanna torrent with your phone? Nope. Want a different keyboard? Sure, unless your typing in a password, then you must use IOS keyboard.
Those are some notable examples I remember off the top of my head.
From a developer standpoint, I can affirm this. Android is much easier to develop on, presumably because Android doesn't lock down as much functionality as iOS. Neither is "right" or "wrong," they just have different philosophies.
Oh, and Android has a much lower barrier to entry to begin development. Apple charges significantly more to publish apps, and you can't really develop iOS apps without an Apple device. Not a big deal for the big players, but indie projects have a harder time.
I agree with everything except the last one
Why? Apple doesn’t directly make money off our data. They’re def the most privacy focused of the major options.
I would say these are all benefits of using Android, IMO (but with interoperability with Google products, of course).
especially the last point, google is just the best with privacy! /s
Other than blue bubbles,
I'm the one in the group DM that turns the bubbles green,
I'm far enough removed from iPhones that I don't know what this means :)
Idk it just works and I have the whole ecosystem to support it so why not. I flip flop between Android and iPhone whenever. My previous phone was a Pixel 6 Pro. It really doesn’t matter to me, it’s just about how goofy I feel on the day I decide to buy a phone.
Same. Got an S23U in May, I like it, but I started to miss my iPhone so I popped my sim card back in my 12pro max. Can’t decide if I want to keep using it and get the 15 when it comes out or switch back to my 23U.
I don’t like that a giant tech company today is basically an advertising company. Google that is. And so I don’t like that they made their phone OS “free” so that they could dominate the platform and so increase the reach of their advertising empire.
I like that apples business is products. Make, design and sell them to the customer. So I pick Apple. If Microsoft were still in the game and were not trying to steal google’s advertising business I’d consider them too.
Also, apple products have always done well for me. There’s a bit of a knack to picking the right time to buy, probably happens one out of every few years that there’s a sweet spot.
But IME, if you do you’ve got a good reliable product for years. I’ve been using Apple stuff since ~2005 and basically only had two laptops and two phones. Second laptop could do with an upgrade shortly (latest OS isn’t supported and M2 looks pretty good), though it doesn’t have to be and the second phone is going strong still.
This. When you buy an iPhone, the phone is the product. When you buy an android phone, you are the product.
My Employer provides me with an iPhone for work use, primarily for remote access.
I was enthusiastic about getting it, as a long time time android user I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, but having interacted with it frequently I really don't get why people like it so much.
Completely agree.
I have so much less control and navigating is not easier. I exclusively use it for work and as infrequently as possible.
I'm consistently impressed with Samsung flagship and plan to remain there for the years to come.
Different strokes for different folks, but this is where I land.
Same boat here. Some stuff is so counterintuitive that it's frustrating. For example, I want to turn Bluetooth off, since it's my work phone and I rarely need to connect headphones to it - why cant I turn it off properly through the quick access menu? Same with wifi, who tought it was a good idea to turn off bluetooth and wifi until the next day, with Bluetooth not even being properly turned off and instead just put into "do not pair" mode?
The overall experience is smooth and everything feels uniformous and well engineered, but some design decisions werent made by actual humans I swear.
Because ive been sucked into the Apple universe (except my laptop. I just can’t).
Plus, and honestly more importantly, you take it out of the box and it just works.
Oh, and I can’t stand/understand googles UI no matter how hard I try. It’s just not I that I’ve to me.
I've never taken an android out of the box and it not work. Not sure what that statement even means.
Oh man the MacBook is the shit, I switched to mac years ago, windows laptops just suckkkkkkk. The touchpad alone is enough for me to never have a windows laptop again. Can dual boot it to windows too to cover all bases. My MacBook is over 10 years old and still running the latest OS smoothly and feels like it's up to todays standards still for what I use it for.
(except my laptop. I just can’t).
That's kinda funny because that's probably their product category that I find the most compelling. Watches and earbuds I don't care about, phones can really go either way, but since they switched to the M chips the power and efficiency are just so good the Windows laptop just look a lot worse in comparison to me.
I admittedly haven’t looked at the MacBooks since I bought my surface, but size and storage/processing were a large part of my decision. Plus I struggle with some of the Mac gestures. I honestly can’t get past the lack of right click, HOWEVER windows is doing some seriously annoying dumb shit lately, so I’ll look at the MacBook again, when my surface dies.
Every other computer I interact with is on windows. All the software we have is windows (I’m not sure how subscription services work for switching OS).
All I’m saying is it’ll take some doing to switch over, and they hadn’t been worth it to me in past researching. Just like I’d struggle to switch from the Apple phone/watch/AirPod situation.
You can replace OneUI with a different launcher. I don't have these app pages that are unintuitive boxes. I have an alphabetical app list with a favorites at the top.
Are you using niagara launcher by any chance?
It used to be guaranteed OS updates for me. But now that I’m in the ecosystem it’s too much of a hassle to switch.
Between HomeKit, having an Apple Watch & AirPods and now using macOS for work everything is convenient.
The HomeKit part maybe changing though.
Yea I completely forgot to mention HomeKit in my comment! Is it kind of generic and do I wish it could do more? Yea, but damn is it nice to tell Siri “goodnight” and all the light in the house go out, the doors lock, and the alarm sets! Plus my partner can use it better than home assistant, and if I need my bro to come watch my house for a week, I can give him access on his phone and revoke it any time!
Hopped on the iPhone train with the 5S. That phone was such a performance beast. Blew the competition out of the water. Android phones at the time looked like toys in comparison.
The gap is a lot smaller now than it used to be, but I’ve just stuck with it. I have a 13 mini now and I love the small size with basically no compromise. I’ll cling onto this thing until it dies and then maybe switch to a Linux phone if they’ve caught on by then.
Linux phones are a thing?
Kind of. There is the PinePhone and Librem 5 that both run full Linux. I have a Pinephone. Unfortunately, the hardware is underpowered and the software is not ready to replace iOS or Android. The battery is also not good. The standby has improved a lot, so it can last a day of limited use, but the battery drains very quickly when the device is actively being used. It's definitely fun to play around with, and it even has the convergence feature Microsoft tried to do with Windows Phone. The UI changes to regular desktop Linux when plugging the phone into a monitor and connecting a keyboard and mouse. But again, the hardware really limits what can be done.
In short, Linux phones are a thing, but not reliable enough to be the only phone a person has.
I like android and have a couple android devices (mostly retro handhelds and CCTV, and have spun up a few VMs), I also have many devices with linux (unraid, pihole, vpn servers, web servers) and run a pfsense firewall (FreeBSD), AND my gaming PC is windows...
I say all that because when it comes to mobile devices, however, I am all in pretty much on apple. Phone, watch, Pro 2s, and Ipad mini go with me pretty much every where. Why? not really the app eco-system (because I do so much self-hosting and use a lot of PWAs, and I dont play games on my phone), its the inter-operability between all the devices, its the find my device, Its the earpods going from my ipad to my iphone in an instant, Its the battery life, its (for the most part) security of the devices.
The blue/green bubble thing is weird and I don't understand why people get so upset over it. I use everything, and to be honest the only thing at this point in my life I would like to get rid of is windows, but I can't yet because of gaming.
If not for gaming, I would run Linux. Linux on gaming just isn't on par yet.
Yea I love my steam deck, but I can’t even run holoiso on my main rig even if I wanted to because I have a 3080 and apparently they don’t play nice together. Then on top of that not being able to play online mp games, is a pain as well.
Are you me? The only difference is macbookair for my portable, then two windows machines, one work (nuc on windows) and gaming rig on windows.
The work machine isn’t changing anytime soon due to the applications I need, but with windows 11 crap and how smooth my steam deck is I’m so close to wiping the gaming machine and going Linux. Thankfully with the knowledge from my server, the switch will be more kind than if I’d never touched Linux before.
Thankfully with the knowledge from my server, the switch will be more kind than if I’d never touched Linux before.
For real man, close to a decade ago I started off with a raspberry pi b+ and literally copying and pasting every code I found, and today I feel I can do almost anything I want in Linux. Moving from tinkering with Xbmc and retropies, to setting up openhan and pi-holes, then moving on to dockers, home assistant, and web-servers to building out a server/networking closet and running cat6 through the house lol
I love that the steam deck has a desktop mode as well. If steamos was out for desktop AND it supported nvidia (which it currently doesn’t), then that would be my new OS and I’d drop windows today.
I use an iPhone 12 because:
Not sure why this is downvoted so much. These are very valid points.
Basically because of company Google became. Not saying Apple is better, just they respect my privacy so much more and support their products for longer, give a shit about security, etc. Matters to me.
I don't care at all about the bubbles. I don't use iMessage at all, 0.
Genuinely curious how the price works out to be less?
Overall I ended up changing a couple of Android devices within the same time frame that I’d be using a single iPhone. I have an XS which is a ~5 years old device and will get the 17. And it’s still a very capable one.
When you say there isn't anything close to an apple watch what features are you talking about? Because I have so far not heard a convincing argument for an apple watch instead of something like Garmin.
Maybe if your main use case is as an activity tracker, you’re probably right. But for me it’s a phone extension. I think Garmins are mainly sport watches with some smart features and the Apple watch is the opposite. Calling someone using siri, or doing things with siri in general are features I use all the time. Apple watch for me is a phone that I can use when cooking and taking care of a toddler at the same time without ever touching it. Garmin simply can’t do it. Alexa is not that great and the general integration is obviously not as good as Apple.
a few reasons: I know I'll get product support for the entire life of the phone. I will always be able to update to the latest software. The OS feels a lot more polished, refined, and smoother than android phones that I have used in the past. It works seamlessly with my Apple TV and MacBook, the apps available are generally higher quality, receive updates faster, and some of the specific ones I use are not available on android (foreflight). The camera outperforms other androids that I have used.
Because over the last 7 years my iPhones consistently delivered very good user experience, including migrating to the next device, which is completed in about an hour or two, and then there’s everything on the new device: apps, configuration and data.
Same deal with android phones these days as long as you actually sync all your apps, photos and contacts with your Google account.
Even my external app licensing transferred successfully on my recent upgrade and it only took about 30 minutes.
Yep, about the only things that don't transfer (in my experience, anyway) are files in your phone's memory—the transfer is usually wireless, so it's understandable—and apps not available on the Play Store—also understandable; the apps "sync" by literally redownloading all the apps from the Play Store (which is honestly for the best; it'll download the best optimized version of the app available for your new phone as opposed to one optimized for your old phone).
Migrating to the next device is super simple and quick on Android. Samsung, as well as Google, have made that available for many years. User experience is subjective. I can't stand the UI when I have to pick up an Apple device
Switched to iphone for first time. This is what I like: Camera Compact size Shortcuts
What I hate: Recent call log sucks, only displays few calls No call recording No back button gesture. Swipe to go back only works in few apps. Have to tap 3-4 times to come back to home screen from wifi/bt joining setting No whatsapp backup without icloud, I already have gdrive subscription, why should I also purchase icloud Google photos backs up all photos, cant select to backup just camera photos, because of iphones fucked up storage management. Keyboard sucks, google keyboard was way fast for me. I could just just hold and input characters form it without switching everytime. Nzb360 dosent work because of app store policy.
In response to a couple of those hate lines:
Re keyboard: Surprised you hate the keyboard, I have never been remotely as accurate on an android phone (I do have to interact with them frequently for work). But you can install gboard from the App Store, and I believe that is the same Google keyboard as on android, but I may be mistaken. Doesn’t let you use it on password fields tho, which can get annoying.
Re nzb360: check out LunaSea. I ended up migrating to qBit with vuetorrent as a webui so I can just use a PWA tho, then I don’t have to worry about app compatibility, at least for torrents. Sonarr/radarr/others have been fine for me in a PWA
Re iCloud: you pay for Google drive, which is googles version of iCloud. on an iPhone, you get iCloud. I imagine Android won’t let you backup your WhatsApp stuff to onedrive, iCloud, etc, so why would it be different on iPhone?
Re storage management: this really comes down to how you think about things. Apple goes for a more “tag” like approach with albums where Google goes for a more “folder” like approach. Some people think about it one way, some another. Personally, I lost all my photos from both my previous android phones because it could never figure out how/where to save them (back in the micro sd card days). I’m sure it’s better now, but boy howdy did it suck the last time I used it.
As for Google photos, I use Immich, which is a self hosted alternative, and it lets you backup based on album(s) or everything. I would imagine Google photos could do the same, but if it can’t, that’s on Google.
What I have found when people switch (either direction) is complaints about compatibility with services they are used to. So iPhone to android, complaints about losing iMessage, or iCloud Drive, or whatever other stuff may only be available to apple customers. The same holds true in the opposite direction, so android to iPhone, complaints about RCS (which yeah, apple should support anyway) or backup to Google drive. But really, it’s a completely different platform. While some things come over and are compatible, not everything is due to competing platforms having competing services. And at the end of the day, that’s what makes both platforms better.
Personally, I’ve been on iOS for probably 10 years with maybe a single Pixel in there for a brief period before I returned it. I like it because it’s familiar and what I’m used to. When it comes to my phone, I don’t have patience for troubleshooting things, I just want it to do what I need, and get out of my way. My last android phone, it felt like all I did for 2 weeks before returning it was tinker with it to make it cooperate, and in the end, I just didn’t care anymore, so back to iPhone I went.
And none of that was intended to be hostile if it came off that way, text is hard sometimes. Hope some of those replies help you!
I don’t trust Google with a goddamn thing, and Microsoft couldn’t get its shit together.
Privacy
What's this about bubbles? I never heard anything about it before until last week, and it didn't make sense.
Android user.
People with iPhones use iMessage for texting which turns their bubbles blue (green for any other type of phone) and with iMessage there are a whole slew of features that people enjoy like chat bubbles to show active typing, read receipts, sending over Wi-Fi, etc. Often there's one member of a group chat with an Android who can't take advantage of those features and it limits the group chat features since they use SMS/MMS/RCS protocol instead. Here's an article about it:
https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-1021350/
Android to Android uses RCS: feature rich
iPhone to iPhone uses iMessage: feature rich
Android to iPhone uses SMS or MMS: bland, boring, and unsecure
Why you ask, Apple won't let anyone else use the iMessage protocol and also won't add RCS to their phones so they just use a protocol from the 90s instead
So basically the expected experience of literally any non sms/mms messaging protocol? But somehow designed to cause weird elitism? We had those features when we would hop onto whatever popular messenger on the pc after elementary school... or the coloured translucent all in one apple computer before it was cool to have apple products.
It's an American thing. If you live anywhere else probably use WhatsApp so you don't have that problem.
To be truthful the FCC should have forced apple to move off iMessages. Especially due to them registering numbers which they shouldn't have control over. Friend got a new number recently when they changed providers, the new number of course didn't work for any messages that came from iPhones because it was previously used by an Apple user.
So essentially someone buys a service from Company A. Puts it in their hardware from Company B, yet company C is dictating their ability to recieve messages. The user did this ~June 15th, didnt figure out iPhones weren't able to send her messages to June 20th. So her birthday was June 18th, the same day as fathers day. Most plans almost fell through because her dads iPhone just lies and says the iMessage is read immediately.
There really should just be a class action lawsuit against Apple that requires them to stop hijacking services from users that are not their customers.
Sidenote: Apple's first solution they provide for this is to move your sim card to one of their products to deregister from their services. That is so fucking disgusting to me. Thankfully the site now has a "No longer have your old device option" to de-register from the servoce you never signed up for... on a product you never owned.
...end rant, sry
The more you buy into the ecosystem, the better it all gets. I use a Mac for work and at home, so an iPhone is a natural choice.
The iPhone was the first smartphone. I got my 3G before android phones were a thing. Once you are used to an ecosystem, it just is easier to stay there. I struggle when someone hands me an android.
That is true, it goes the other way too. The only reason I can somewhat use an IPhone proficiently is because of the amount of tech support I have given for them.
Bubbles are literally no part of the reason why I use one, I genuinely could not give less of a shit about that. The real reason is pretty simple: my old phone died and I needed a new one pretty quickly. At the time it was basically a decision between a Pixel 4a and an iPhone SE 2020, which seemed like the best options at that price point. The Pixel had a better battery, camera, and used android, with the possibility of flashing a custom rom (which all else equal I'd prefer), while the iPhone's main advantages were the much faster chip and longer support period. I probably would have gone the Pixel, but as it turned out it wasn't in stock at the time, so I got the iPhone.
Because in my opinion, it’s the best product in its class. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
An Android version of an iPhone 13 Mini doesn’t exist. At least it didn’t when I bought the iPhone.
The Zenfone seems to make a pretty nice compact phone. I've been tempted to get one but I got hooked on Pixels.
I have a Google Pixel 6a. It's probably pretty close to what you want from a iPhone Mini. It's still a bit bigger than the iPhone Mini and I would like an even smaller version.
I almost went the mini route, but landed on the pixel 7 due to the insane trade-in deals last year.
The ecosystem. (For better or worse.)
I prefer Android but the ability to do things such as use my AirPods on multiple Macs, iPhones, and iPads is very convenient. Ditto for things like Apple TV and HomeKit (though I use Home Assistant to control my HomeKit devices).
Other things:
In short: iPhone is an appliance but an Android smartphone is/can be a pocket computer with greater flexibility.
YMMV
EDIT: Also, my wife and kids use iPhone. When I used an Android phone, I had them all install signal so we communicate securely. With iPhone, that's built in.
Your airpods comment I feel it's a downside because you're limited to Apple devices. My Galaxy buds seamlessly work on and automatically switch between my phone, tablets, and Windows PC. And they don't look like there's a string hanging out of my ear
That's built in to android now with Rcs which uses the exact same encryption as signal.
And funny enough, apple decided not to support it so now apple users are the ones who force it to revert to MMS.
There's always that one apple guy in the group chats killing the high res photos and videos.
I don't know why people say this is a feature of iphonesm All I hear is people complaining that texting g doest work very well on iphone.im an android guy, and have never had a problem texting nobody.
It's an issue with apple not wanting to either share their message protocol(which is understandable) or integrate rcs which would make almost everything to work as intended
It boggles the mind that people won't just install WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram or anything of the sort, and would rather exclude people from group chats or deal with a worse experience. I mean, it's not that big of an ask! I'm sure most people have more than one app on their phone that just sits there and wastes space, why not replace it with one of those? Heck, even Facebook's Messenger could be an alternative.
I used Android for over a decade. Then recently my work bought me an iPhone. My biggest struggle was finding a replacement for Reddit Is Fun, until I found Apollo. I mourned for its loss until I found Lemmy and Wewef. In the end a phone is a phone but Lemmy is life!
Couldn't care less about blue bubbles cause I mostly use Telegram. I'm currently running two phones, on iOS & one Android.
My iPhone syncs nicely with my iPad which i appreciate. I also find the photos app better, especially how you can sort by date (metadata) or date-uploaded. Also the 6.1inch iPhone gets better battery than any of the similar-sized Androids I've tried.
I literally just switched to the iPhone 14 after a lifetime of android phones. Honestly I’ve just gotten older and don’t use my phone like I used to. I don’t need to have android for anything specific anymore and the iPhone AirPods Apple Watch combo really just can’t be beat. You can do the combo with android but honestly nothing is as seamless as the Apple options.
My biggest concern is the longevity of the phone. My android phones all hold their charge well and rarely have issues. My Apple work phone has had its battery crap out after only a year and a half. But still I needed an upgrade and it just made sense.
why do you use iPhone?
In my case, because I had a bad experience with Android phones in their early years. Each model I used had one or the other issues, either battery life, camera issues, screen issues or something else. Around the Samsung S3 days I finally moved to iPhone and "everything just worked".
I am sure things are better now in the Android world hardware-wise (and software-wise Android has always been able to do more), but over the years I have become firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem with the Apple Watch, Airpods, Macbooks, Apple TV etc so it doesn't make sense for me to switch again because there isn't a compelling reason for me to do so.
That's why I avoid apple products. I don't want to get sucked into an ecosystem where my choice of what product to buy is so limited.
I wouldn’t worry about it. You can make things work just as well as android phones work with everything else. AirPods work with android phones and you can sync data through google apps, etc. just as well on iphone. I have both and android (Pixel) and iPhone and don’t feel “sucked in” to anything.
The main difference for me is that iphones have been more durable. I went through three Pixel upgrades, two times there was some minor hardware issue that bricked the phone. The one I have now had a cracked screen - even though I got a tempered glass screen protector and always keep it in the case. If my iPhone gets bumped around I don’t need to worry. With my second Pixel I dropped the phone four feet onto linoleum ( not a super hard surface) and a capacitor came loose. It cost almost as much as a new phone to get it fixed and it was not a typical repair, so trying to even find a place to do this specialized kind of repair was going to be a hassle.
For me knowing that my phone isn’t just going to spontaneously break is a big factor.
I don’t want to get sucked into an ecosystem where my choice of what product to buy is so limited.
This isn't actually the case in my experience, because non-Apple products work just fine with the iPhone unless it's some Android-specific accessory. No one wants to ignore the iPhone market so they make sure that their product is well-supported on iPhones. For instance, I use a bunch of headphones from various manufacturers, apart from AirPods, and they all work great too.
The actual issue is that if you want to move from iPhone to Android later you may have issues getting some Apple devices you have to work with Android, e.g. I don't think the Apple Watch works at all with Android.
I'm not an Apple person, but this makes perfect sense to me. I think it was Steve Jobs himself who talked about the iPod "halo effect", which was the idea that if they could sell you an iPod because it was cool (and it was), and they made the iPod experience on PC worse than on the Mac (which it was initially), then people were more likely to buy a Mac as their next machine. If they didn't, they got FOMO, because they already bought the iPod and obviously want the best experience out of it. (That's an oversimplification and not sure it was Jobs, but the gist is there).
Now the Apple ecosystem is designed so that every Apple product is pretty tightly integrated with every other one. Unless you have some deeper reason to get away from it (privacy concerns, cost, lack of features, customizability, etc), there isn't a reason at all to leave.
My first smartphone was an iPhone 3GS. Android wasn’t really an competitive option yet. Since then, I’ve stayed on iOS because I already had purchased apps I’d loose if I switched. (Remember when you bought mobile games, instead of endlessly paying for them with in-game currency?) Vendor lock-in is real.
My guest smartphone was also the 3GS. I switched to android because it didn't have copy and paste or flash.
Reliability, battery life, OS optimization, long term support.
These things may be normal for today’s android handsets, but back when I switched from the Samsung Galaxy S6 to the iPhone, they definitely weren’t the norm. I went through about 6 different android phones, got into custom roms and bootloaders, did all that fancy stuff. I got real comfortable with it and I got used to the idea that my phone app might just lock up randomly for no reason. Or my GPS app would freeze when I’m miles and miles away from civilization. I got tired of troubleshooting and stuff and I just wanted something reliable.
I’m a mobile dev. iOS is just a lot more powerful, both software wise as hardware wise. There is so much shit you just can’t do on Android.
As a user, there's so much shit you can't do on iOS.
For me as a developer by far the biggest restriction on Android is raw performance, it's just so much slower than iOS, even the high-end phones.
Next is the lack of proper updates, if you build an app for Android and you want to reach a decent audience you have to target an ancient version of Android since hardly anyone ever gets OS updates so you can't use any of the newest functionality.
Combined with this is the lack of widely supported APIs. We're doing a bunch of GPU compute, on iOS this is no problem: you can use Metal Compute and it's supported on iPhone 6S and later (which is practically every iPhone still in use). On Android there is nothing comparable. There is RenderScript which is deprecated and lacks a lot of functionality, it's also slow and you can never be sure it actually runs on the GPU (it can fall back to CPU on certain devices and you have zero control over this). Newer OpenGL ES versions support compute, but it's only available on a handful of devices, same goes for Vulkan. Even then, which features are supported differs per device and per GPU. Sometimes there are even different versions of the 'same' device (at least: same marketing name) with completely different internals and different GPUs (I'm looking at you Samsung).
Android is a fucking mess.
Most of those things are deliberate restrictions on Apple's part, rather than technical ones (it is really shitty though).
Yeah, like shake-to-undo. I was dumbfounded when I discovered that the ability to undo was not implemented on Android.
Isnt that wholely dependant on what kind of dev and project youre working on. For example, browser devs would diaagree given that all browsers on IOS must use Webkit.
One thing for me is honestly how great the operating system is. A lot of people just look at phones as the basic call text, download apps, etc. but I’ve been trying to use my phone to answer questions that I would normally Google or two to look at stock prices or two Google definitions for words, or even using the native translator app inside.
I have 15 years worth of apps
There are plenty of reasons.
A robust ecosystem Privacy protection features and measures that are given first rate support - at least as far as you can say about a closed source platform Simplicity
I have years of experience with iPhones and flagship Galaxy phones since the 5.
I’m settled on the iPhone for now because those blue bubbles make keeping in contact with family easy. Sure you could use WhatsApp but if it’s not already being used, most people won’t want to download another app just to communicate. They’d rather use the built in texting app.
It also syncs well with my watch that I use for fitness tracking, and my Mac Studio that I use for professional work.
with it's proprietary software, no one knows whether or not ios is good for privacy or not. it certainly sends data back to apple automatically, without user consent.
Yeah. I added an addendum although I clearly did not format it properly.
They claim to be about privacy and seem to consider it a first class concern or however you want to put it.
I weighed the risks and the inconvenience of using a degoogled phone severely outweighs its utility for me.
In an ideal world I could be using GrapheneOS but a lot of OSS still has some ways to go in terms of design and functionality.
Also before the “HA GOTCHA GO SUPPORT THEM YOURSELF” etc etc, I financially support many open source projects and foundations and am working on sharpening my dev skills to contribute more.
I am on android rn but at least in europe, apple is forced to allow 3rd party appstores soon which was the main dealbreaker for me. Their ui + cross device integration is very nice. Hopefully they are going to release a foldable soon! Handwriting apps are much more polished on iPads than on Android.
I'm a dedicated Android user, and really none of my friends or family use iPhone. What is a blue or green bubble??
Every android phone I've owned has crapped out by the 2 year mark, and that's even when not using custom ROMs or rooting. IMO iPhones are more reliable and provide a more consistent UX. They also offer a better baseline level of privacy. (Granted, you can't beat GrapheneOS and the like on android)
I have a Samsung s5 that's still fully functioning, I use it as a music player when I'm driving as I don't use Spotify or any of that.
What are you doing to your phones mate? I've had two androids in the last 8 years and only because I dropped the first one under a bus.
My employer (a mid-sized tech company) had a policy that employees could access corporate Slack, email, etc. from personal iPhones but not personal Android phones. I think it was for security reasons.
I was using Android, but I needed mobile phone access for on-call shifts. The company gave me a choice of either replacing my Android with an iPhone (and they would partially reimburse the cost); or, they would issue me a corporate iPhone, and I'd have to carry both phones when I was on-call. I picked the first option and switched to iPhone.
I personally prefer the two devices. Keeps my work live separate from my personal life.
Exactly. And when you're not expected required to answer, it should be turned off and out of sight.
I got frustrated by buggy behavior from Android in general. Even with Google software (Android Auto), it wasn’t uncommon for functionality to break after updates.
I’ll take consistency over more (but buggier) features. Quality over quantity.
Oh, and the cinematic mode was a game changer for this Vidiot.
I think it’s easier and more reliable
For me, a big one is integration with email / calendar / contacts services that aren't Google. I don't know where Google dropped the ball here - Android was originally amazing for this kind of thing - but at some point they started bolting a lot of features specifically on top of Google accounts, and out of the box Android doesn't even understand how to sync with CalDAV / CardDAV. So if I want my Nextcloud stuff to work at all I need to go and install a third party app. The third party app works great (I happily used DAVx5 for many years), but it's ridiculous when iOS has all that integration officially supported and available straight out of the box. And it even does clever things, like suggesting contact details it learns from my (Fastmail) email. Android has that stuff, but it is completely on the cloud, and it only works if you give everything to Google.
Thankfully outlook and corporate outlook accounts are wonderfully supported under Android these days and have been the industry standard for decades.
You want to use some niche calendar protocol from 2007, you're going to need a plugin or third party app.
I sort of get it. Outside of Gmail and Exchange, mail with calendar and contacts is a bit hit and miss. There just isn't the all ecompassing protocols like Exchange that can cater for it all, so you have to use the "niche calendar protocol from 2007" to fill the gaps.
I pay for O365 mainly for this purpose, as Exchange is the defacto mail provider of todays age. I used to host my own Exchange but in the last couple of years and vulnerabilities kept on getting more and more worrying and the patches became more involved, so I just decided to pay MS for the service. Perhaps I played right into their hands ...
Here in Japan iPhones are massively popular, more than in most other markets. I just Googled it: iPhones are 67%, Android 33%. That's crazy.
The reasons are: people think they're stylish/cool (in Japan this is SUPER important), they think they must be good because they're expensive, and they think Android is 'scary' because they've never used it before. They literally don't know that Android does everything iOS does, usually better/with more customisation, and that it offers way more control (you can make Android even more simple and basic than iOS if you tinker a bit).
To be honest, even talking about places other than Japan, 98% of people probably have never even stopped to think why they're on either Android/iOS - it's only the 2% of people like us who talk about it.
It is funny though that iPhone users here in Japan have so little idea about why their phones aren't working properly, and have to make actual reservations to have a 'genius' look at their phone and fix it for them. Usually it's just clearing cache or something. They also pay literal hundreds of dollars to have their data transferred over when they get a new iPhone, unaware that cloud storage is capable of doing all of this for you for free.
I personally wouldn't voluntarily use Apple products myself, but I have people close to me that buy iPhone because they think that's the best smartphone they can buy. There are some truths to it from the standpoints of warranty policies, technologies, privacy policies, update policies, securities, and reputations.
More reliability, more polished OS and longer support cycle.
So generally I believe that Apple respects privacy more than google overall.
That doesn’t mean Apple is some privacy beacon.
But I have never had Apple randomly turn a setting on my phone on. Google got caught redhanded doing that. I had been using android for years until that incident.
Apple I buy my phone. Google I am the product.
Ironically, I just buy whatever’s cheaper lol. That was android for a few phones, and I was happy as a clam. Then the time came for an upgrade, and my carrier had a crazy sale for the previous year’s iphone. So I gave it a shot.
Still happy as a clam lol. I think of myself as being very “techy”, I use linux, etc., but I really don’t need my phone to do anything special. I use like 6 apps that are all multi platform. Very little about my flow changed.
I prefer the keyboard on android actually, and I like firefox on android better than safari. But everything else is pretty much fine. I’d be okay going iphone again, or back to android. Whatever’s cheaper when the time comes.