Okay, this is not an iPhone vs Android Phone debate. I respect your right to choose whichever platform that you want.
I mean, iPhone seems so antithetical with the idea of freedom. You have to connect it to a server to even use it, all apps have to go through a centralized server, no option to install whatever apps you want, which means, you literally cannot have any third-party apps without an online account.
Most of my fellow americans seems to love the idea of freedom so much, yet just buy into a closed ecosystem with no freedom? 🤔
Like almost 60% of Americans use iPhone, kinda weird to preach freedom when you cant even have an app without a corporation’s approval. If it were any other country, I wouldn’t find it weird, but for a country that’s obsessed with the idea of freedom (so much so that they disobeyed mask mandates), it’s really weird to be using a device with zero freedom.
I can only speak for myself and my kids. I have an iPhone because my work gave me one for free. They only support iPhone for security reasons. Keeping Android devices up to date across a large fleet is challenging leaving security gaps. For my kids they wanted my old iPhones because it’s what all their friends have.
Because they are easily gullible.
Whatever you say, Mr. President!
Until there is a better alternative to the new evil that is google/alphabet, apple is a lesser evil.
when you cant even have an app without a corporation’s approval
Apple has successfully positioned themselves as “the good guy”.
- Apple broke the monopoly of phone provider locks, and still prohibits phone provider bloatware.
- Apple seems like the only provider with any care for privacy, and many of their features and policies are privacy focussed
- Apple puts more effort than most software providers into usability
- you might think Apples constraints on the App Store blocks legitimate opensource and personal projects, but it mostly blocks commercial exploitation. It blocks behaviors that abuse customers or their privacy, that will give users a bad experience. I’ve read the requirement for a fee with a real credit card is actually the most effective strategy against malware
- every major app is available in the App Store
- its just a phone. My phone needs to just work, unlike my computer which needs to do whatever I want it to.
So maybe the root cause is lack of consumer protection in the US, but my experience with iPhone is much better than with Android phones. I’m not blind to corporate shenanigans but I do feel better protected in the Apple ecosystem. I do have freedom to choose almost any legitimate app, and I’m not particularly interested n futzing around with my phone anyway
I have no need for third party apps.
For anything beyond texting or scrolling, I have a desktop.
Defying mask mandates wasn’t due to a ‘love for freedom’ but due to delusions and selfishness.
Because an iPhone isn’t “that” expensive when you buy it on a plan. I mean it’s only $38 CAD for the new iPhone 6e on a Contract. That’s with my paycheque to paycheque budget. /s
Though honestly that’s the mind set of these users. Sure they are literally paying $100+ CAD more than MSRP. But to them since it includes the data it’s a good deal.
Now bellow is my view as a guy who manages and orgs fleet of Samsung phone, developed apps for both Android and iOS, and is the defacto IT guy for my family.
I think the lean towards iPhones comes from budget Android being crap, and peer pressure from those around them. Get a cheap A series Samsung or a Budget Acer and you are just asking for a slow and buggy experience where the mic will just stop working after 2 years. Or it’s running Android One.
Even an older iPhone like the 6s is still supported by many apps. Plus since it once had flagship specs. The soc has more power and runs better than anything new from Android. It’s the same logic that if you get an older iPad for the same price as a new Fire Tablet the iPad will be better than a fire tablet.
The solution is to get a more expensive Android. But once you get to the price point of a Samsung S series, you might as well get an iPhone. The price is comparable, and you don’t loose out on features like the App Store (google play is a steaming pile in comparison). Plus iMessage and FaceTime is seamless and Airdrop “just works”.
My relative had Android for years and struggled to use them. I finally convinced one of them to use an iPhone XR by the time the 14 was coming out, and now my Nan is texting and doing FaceTime. They could’ve done this before with the budget Android their carrier gave them. But the work Apple did to make it feel intuitive is brilliant. In fact because of the confidence boost from the iPhone, she’s even gotten herself an iPad to do her crossword puzzles.
On top of that, unlike Apple. There is no guarantee that if you pay more for you Android that I’ll keep getting support. Most phones struggle to offer more than 2 years. And with the fiasco around the Pixel 4 battery, it’s hard to believe the biggest players “promises”. Compare that to Apple and while the promise 7 years, realistically it can be 10 years.
For me the reason I swapped over was the Play Store being hot garbage. And the disgusting amount of uninstallable bloat on it. I tried for years to install custom ROMs and midrange Chinese phones to get around it. While it works, I grew tired of the work required just to keep my phone up to date. And the loss of built in features since I was going u official. Like the loss of 2/3 cameras in the app (trying to find a cracked gcamera which enables both is a chore), and contactless pay (evolution x worked sometime, and locked me out other time).
Don’t get me wrong iOS isn’t better than Android. I miss my headphone jack, FDroid, side loading my own apps, the ease of adding custom ringtones, and custom launcher. Oh and being able to use 3rd party web browsers that aren’t skins of Safari (WebKit). But when updates come through I’m not concerned. My contactless pay works. Ad blocking is possible and I can’t complain about the cameras.
I want my phone to be like a gaming console.
I turn it on, it works. I install curated stuff from a store.
The hardware is stable and predictable and thus software is of better quality when the developer doesn’t need to test 420 different hardware variants.
I do not want it to be a Linux PC I need to tinker with every day. I specifically want it to prevent me from fucking with it.
EDIT: I also have “adult money” so I can get any phone I want, I don’t need to get the cheapest.
Unsure why you got downvoted. Same experience here. I already script and program, sometimes I just want stuff that’s stable.
Tbh androids privacy is shit. I’d rather deal with Apple than Google both on hardware and privacy any day. The only way I’d switch is to something like Graphene
The binary choice is the freedom. As many people in this thread have discussed, it’s not a real choice, but it’s simple enough that most people will put on blinders and accept the available options.
I use iPhone. It sucks but network effect from people in my circle brought me here
Because my belief in political freedom has nothing to do with my phone choice and it would be odd to conflate the two.
When I had an android I had to spend a lot more time making sure apps would work with my phone and that my phone would be “secure” whereas I have less concerns of that with apple.
Simply put with apple I dont have to do as much work to make sure things work.
Americans don’t really value freedom. Not really. Americans pretend they like freedom, but they will give up all their freedoms for the slightest bit of convenience, and because social media told them so.
Am I talking about consumer electronics, or politics? Impossible to say.
Tbh. It’s the same in the UK. Our governments, of both sides, are killing any perception of privacy we had and no-one is doing/saying anything.
Having said that people are mostly dealing with the terrorist inspired killings here that the are allied to the immigration issue.
The people have had enough, the governments of the last twenty years have been obvious or more likely not looking (at the disquiet).
There isn’t enough room to think of the loss of privacy/security yet. We are in a hell of a mess.
I understand the sentiment you are going for, but I think it is a little cheap regarding the opinion of 300 million+ people.
In my horribly narrow opinion, the American freedom is simply the freedom to choose. Nothing more, nothing less. The freedom to own a tiger, buy a tank or be “Florida man” for a day.
It is not “free” from manipulation and sometimes it really feels like a 5 year old choosing to do the opposite of the right thing just “because”.
Sidenote: I ABSOLUTELY do not think it is the best way to build a nurturing society, but I get why it has such a passionate supporter base.
It was a nurturing society when most were in communities that interacted with each other. We have lost that for many reasons
You have to connect it to a server to even use it
That’s also true of the versions of Android that 99.99% of people use
cannot have any third-party apps without an online account.
Most people don’t care. They’ll use the suggested app store and have an account already.
Right or not, it is what it is.
Not an American but to be honest, both Google and Apple are appalling. Google openly steal all your data and sell it. Apple do similar but on a smaller scale but also claim they’re all about privacy. Both make it difficult to use alternative app stores but with Apple its actually impossible. Phone vendors can and do install their own awful bloat on Android phones. Apple force you to use webkit for any browsing you might want to do, Android’s native GUI is a mess. Nothing Apple put on their devices is open source so all their claims of privacy can never be verified. Both companies constantly try and impose proprietary standards or charge you a bajillion pounds for a fucking pen or some such bullshit.
The key difference for me is I can put something like Calyx or Graphene on an Android device and use a whole open source ecosystem of alternative apps which vastly improves the privacy of my device.
Not an American, but as an iPhone user who has had Android phones since cupcake before: iPhones „just work“, they are a lot less janky than Android, the ecosystem is smooth (although admittedly and intentionally less so when leaving it), they get updated for longer (and at the same time!) and apple has a much better privacy track record than the competition (a low bar).
Yes, I would prefer to install my apps from anywhere I want on the device I should own. An open source phone from top to bottom would be my dream, but Android is about as far removed from that as an iphone. Google took Linux and made it into a Frankenstein nightmare that is wholly dependent on them.
Just try to stick to open source and make your phone respect your privacy and see how far you get. Start at the usually locked bootloader, install a rom without google and see how few apps are left that do not require google services. And even then you are most likely dependent on binary blobs for the drivers, meaning the manufacturers can (and will) pull the rug from under your efforts as soon as they no longer feel like updating their shitty built of Android for the device in time.
I do not have time for that. What I have is enough money to buy a phone that comes as close as possible to my idea of safety, freedom and privacy without constantly jumping through burning hoops. If I am to be in a cage, it better be golden.
An open source phone from top to bottom would be my dream, but Android is about as far removed from that as an iphone. Google took Linux and made it into a Frankenstein nightmare that is wholly dependent on them.
have you considered flashing custom roms on it? e/OS, LineageOS and GrapheneOS (restricted to google pixel for hardware+privacy/security reasons) are all opensource.
Graphene. Don’t try the others if you aren’t prepared for an uphill battle. Graphene just works.
I agree that graphene is the hands down best. But for people who have a device and want to switch, and that device is not a google pixel, well that severely limits your options.
Just to say. I recently jumped from Android and the iPhone didn’t just work like I remember they did. Two bugs I had were adding comments on Reddit using Firefox. The keyboard would come up but my text would be off screen so I couldn’t see what I was typing. This could be a Firefox bug but it was still very weird and not one I’d seen on Android.
One bug that used to get annoying is I’d unlock the phone and when going to type, the volume would be at max briefly before going back to the volume the phone was set at. This caught me out a few times in the middle of the night.
I couldn’t get on with iOS and felt that after not using it since the iPhone 4S that nothing had really improved. Also the lack of being able to use uBlock Origin on Firefox was awful. It’s been a while since I browsed the web without an adblocker and I really hated having to do something every day. Eventually I sold the 16 Pro I had and went back to my Pixel 8.
The one thing I remember being great about the iPhone was when you upgrade you restore the backup and the phone just works. With Android you typically have to go around and login to all the apps again. Again a developer issue but certainly easier on iOS.
This could be a Firefox bug but it was still very weird and not one I’d seen on Android.
This is likely directly related to the fact that Apple blocks use of any other web renderer than Webkit based on App store guidelines.
This means neither Chrome nor Firefox on iOS are actually the normal versions. Normally Chrome uses Blink and Firefox uses Gecko, but they both use Webkit on iOS.
Americans have been propagandized by Apple advertising into thinking Apple products are “high class.”
Ask yourself: Why does anyone wear a Rolex?
It boils down to the same thing, showing people your wealth and thus “social value” (barf) via conspicuous consumption.
If it wasn’t conspicuous consumption, why would US people literally judge potential dating partners on what kind of phone they use?
Its function is exactly what the name implies: to alert people that you have money in the bank. I Am Rich was available for purchase from the phone’s App Store for, get this, $999.99 – the highest amount a developer can charge through the digital retailer, said Armin Heinrich, the program’s developer. Once downloaded, it doesn’t do much – a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext ‘I Am Rich.’ Once activated, it treats the user to a large, glowing gem (pictured above). That’s about it. For a thousand dollars.
This was barely a year after the original iPhone’s release. The attitude toward Apple products has persisted ever since.
I hate to say it, the reason people choose dating partners on phone use is because of blue texts on iMessage. that’s the only reason. Apple was brilliant pitching that as an Android problem instead of playing fair and working on an open standard since day 1. Dragged their feet for years.
I still find this hard to believe. It’s just a visual indicator whether the conversation is encrypted or not, but who would actually judge partners with this.
When I checked with my kids, since we know teenagers can be very shallow bullies, they said there is some light teasing but it was really started by online crap like this. Not even teenagers care. I mean, they don’t usually use iMessages anyway, so many probably never noticed.
“Blue texts” is a fake issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was started as a prank, or by Google, and no one cared until it was all over the internet
It’s not just a visual indication of if it’s encrypted. SMS sucks, truly, compared to apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. so it’s actually annoying to message people with green text. Now that Apple does RCS it’s not a big deal, but in the USA there’s no default internet messaging app like WhatsApp, and to the extent that there is one it’s iMessage.
SMS is default texting for all phones of all types all providers in the US. Its main advantage is ubiquity and it is the only ubiquitous text protocol. SMS was always owned by cell providers.
While I also am disappointed that ubiquitous text protocol owned by cell providers never progressed, can’t blame Apple for that. They could have used their influence to push harder but bottom line is the change needed to be at cell providers. They may also have seen that even Google with all its influence wasn’t able to make it happen (without taking it proprietary, owning it, centralizing it).
But let me ask this: what other texting provider includes a fallback to incorporate texters outside their network? At all? Does WhatsApp include users of iMessage? SMS? RCS?
You can literally blame Apple for that, because that standard did progress, and they did not incorporate it into their default messaging app for years due to anticompetitive marketing practices. To compare the responsibilities of a default and only (since you can’t sidecar on iPhone) text messaging app on a phone with 50% market share with a third party app is bad faith. Even then, WhatsApp and others were cross platform, not hardware dependent.
Did you just reverse your position? I’m confused. Do you think the blue bubbles are more than encryption or not? Do you think people care about them or not? Do you think Apple is a bad faith participant in that issue or not?
Conspicuous consumption doesn’t really hold in this case because the alternative is around the same price.
I’d also question any claim about the dating partner. Maybe a study said it has an impact, but I doubt it’s a strong impact on evaluation of a potential partner. By all means, I’d love to see the source for that
You also cite an example of what was basically a meme. Literally nobody bought that app (and iirc those who were tricked got their money back)
the alternative is around the same price
You know that’s not true.
There are stupidly expensive Android flagships, but there are also a lot of phones for a fraction of the price.
The different colored texts in iMessage and forced downgrade of any MMS sent via an Android is part of that perception by iPhone users that Android’s are inferior devices, even if they cost similarly.
Apple refused to implement RCS until very recently. Not saying Google is better in terms of RCS, they have their own issues, this is just about how Apple has leveraged iMessage to the end of people viewing it as a "higher class’ device than Android.
All the sleek white design was a part of that too. People thought it looked futuristic/costly and the rest of the industry tried to copy their design philosophy due to that. You can’t deny that Apple devices look classy. Apple didn’t pay Jony Ive an absolute fuckton of money per year for nothing.
It about not beeimg sold as the product. Its about using the browser that dont rat you out
But iphones can’t use Firefox with uBlockOrigin and NoScript
True. I run this on an android tablet, but firefox misses my usability needs. So i end up on safari more often than not
That means Apple’s advertising is working if you actually believe they care about your privacy.
