Couple years back decided to go with an iPhone instead of an android for my upgrade. Quickly found out Android is the superior OS in almost every way - and that Apple really does just rely on being a status symbol and its brand appeal.
It’s the most stripped down restrictive phone I’ve ever used, It looks very slick all over, but that’s about the best I can say about it.
Will never get the appeal these things have, and people should be smarter than this bullshit
I've been back and forth for the last few phones. iOS sketches me out less from a security POV since apple is a hardware company and not an adtech company. I also think the UI is more intuitive for the most part. I long for the day when open source mobile OSes are more viable, but in the meantime I mistrust apple slightly less than google.
You don't need to trust Google, you can buy a Pixel and completely degoogle it by installing CalyxOS (more user friendly) or GrapheneOS
I spend enough of my week troubleshooting other people's obscure Linux issues, i don't even have the energy to deal with unfucking the peripherals on my desktop after work, expanding those issues to my phone sounds like the most stressful kind of hell tbh. I'm not emotionally stable enough to use a niche FOSS mobile os right now
I understand and just to be clear, those two OSes are just degoogled versions of Android
I'm actually running a semi broken Linux installation myself, broke it when tinkering, and I don't have the energy to reinstall so I kinda get it :)
Hope things get better for you soon comrade!
I recently switched to iphone after being a ~10 year long android fanboy because google switched safetynet to a hardware attestation. Since I like modifying the software, this was a no-go for me.
What about iOS did you not like? I've been enjoying it a lot, really not a lot I miss from android. I have a Pixel 4a 5G for my work phone and it is okay but I gravitate toward the iphone.
hardware attestation
Sounds like a made up word they say on Star Trek.
For years my biggest gripe about iPhone is not being able to use it like a flash drive and load stuff like movies, images, music and programs.
Maybe that's changed, I've only used iPhone 3G and iPhone 6+ before.
Yeah you can do that, I just checked. Although for a lot of stuff you might still need iTunes.
People I know that have endless money (to buy and upgrade) and zero tech skills seem to love them. They do what they want without much difficulty. Granted, so much of what's free in Android costs quite a bit in iOS.
As an amateur developer, Apple can eat my corny poop for how restrictive and expensive it is to develop. License subscription and renewal is such a fucking pain. I've gotten really decent at putting apps on the web, because the App Store is an absolute horror.
They work for a long time, my little piece of capitalism is on its 6 year :rat-salute:
Apple has been like that for decades. Just like how their computers used to have just one one button. Steve Jobs thought that his users were too fucking stupid to figure out how to use a left and right click.
I hate their design philosophy because, like you said, it's all oriented toward being a status symbol and being easy to use for the tech illiterate
Can you name some things you can't do on an iPhone vs an Android? Thinking about switching in the distant future as I am now the only person in my immediate friends circle without fucking iMessage.
You can't just download things unrestricted. You can't block ads. The app selection is extremely restrictive, and there are very few free apps that are any good. You can't use any Bluetooth device other than audio devices and a few specific keyboards. (This means no open source home automation or ability to use a lot of tools.) You can't do anything that you would intuitively think is possible but is uncommon. (For instance, using your phone as a wifi dongle for a computer, or as a remote microphone, or as a webcam.) You can't use your phone as a wifi hotspot unless you pay your phone carrier extra to allow it.
Any sort of app for controlling a device that isn't very new is extremely unlikely to work. Multitasking functionality is extremely limited. Literally the best it can do is download something in the background while you do something else. You can't record or screen phone calls. The notification system is very stripped down and limited. Automation is non-existent. (You can't setup your phone to do stuff like turn wifi or Bluetooth on and off to save battery when you go places.) Auto reply basically doesn't exist.
The Apple back button thing is app specific. You just have to memorize how each app works. There is a developer suggestion to place a back button at the top left, but generally this is only followed for settings menus.
Automation is non-existent
You can do this type of stuff with Shortcuts or a couple other apps. Not all of the stuff you listed is the same as the last time you checked.
You need an app, a workaround. Android does it automatically.
As someone with ADHD, Android has always been a godsend. I can block ads, uninstall (or at least disable) bloatware, download alternative /open-source versions of things, make my phone as minimal as possible and turn off anything I'm not using. That's my best argument against the Apple ecosystem.
android also bad. all smartphones are bastards. the market relies on the appearance of competition and diversity of choice to breed loyalty.
Yeah my next phone will be one with unlocked bootloader, I currently have a huawei
This is inherently the problem. It’s more a status symbol than a phone. It’s really bourgeois and I’m not using that word lightly. It’s like the symbol of the upper middle class lol
MacBooks are cool machines, for as long as laptops have left around, I’d certainly get one of those for some kind of design or artistry class
I just think phones and tablets are going take over what laptops are currently being used for.
Eh, this still feels like brand loyalty to me. The only feature I use that I would keep and Iphone for anymore is imessage, and any alternative requires that I have people adopt alternative messaging apps, and I still talk to a lot of people IRL.
Wish something could block those ads on youtube tho.
A workaround I found is to use the youtube website inside of brave browser, it has some built in blocking features that seem to get the ads for now. You have to uninstall the youtube app to prevent the phone from forcing you into the app whenever you click on a video though
I'll be the guy in this thread I guess, but Apple just has better OS's. iOS has a way better UI than any android I've had. iMessage allows me to keep my American phone contacts while my mobile contract is paused and I'm living in Europe. Native and seamless device integration and iCloud.
MacBooks are also better and last longer than any Windows laptop I've ever had. And they run a native Unix system so I don't have to run my terminal through Putty to login to my school's remote server cluster and submit computation jobs. The UI is also miles better than Windows, although the gap has closed a fair bit admittedly since Windows switched away from their dumb app scheme from Windows 8. Macbook track pad hits completely different as well. I would never buy an apple desktop though, but as far self contained electronics go, apple products have always been better for me. And the price premium comes out in the wash basically over the lifetime of the device.
Like all these companies suck ass ethically. Google, microsoft, and Apple are all operating on a completely different tier of evil tbh. So as long as you need to have these things, you might as well just go with what you prefer. But acting like we're enlightened for whichever OS and machine we prefer is the real boomer mindset, not having a preference for Apple over Android or Windows.
Sheesh, you weren’t joking about being ‘that guy’ This is bordering on some shit I’d expect to find on the apple subreddit, not an obscure leftist forum.
I’m not acting like I’m ‘enlightened’, the bit about people being ‘smarter in their choices’ or whatever was probably not needed, but I do think people are better than forking over money for a markedly inferior product just so they can have a fruit on the back of their phone. And so other people can recognize them as one of the apple clan ‘Oh dood what model of iPhone do you have dood’?
In all seriousness, I just did not like my experience with an apple phone. Like, it’s all junk with planned obselence right? I’m not going to pay twice that amount for the stupid apple logo on my phone and weaker specs. That is absolutely asinine to me. If you like apple stuff, right on. The experience wasn’t for me, it felt restricted and superficial. Very nice looking products, but there is not much going on under the hood. I think the price premium is ridiculous especially with the lower specs and screen resolution. Frankly though, it doesn’t even matter what I think tbh, a lot or even most people these days can’t afford that shit. So I still have to give it to the various developers of android phones out there, at least a laymen can afford their product. Apple on the other hand I think kind of unapologetically markets itself towards the upper middle class, which is kind of shitty IMO
You’re right, they’re all bad though just there are degrees to how bad each is. I think as far as phones go though, apple is the worst. Don’t care about laptops or any of that stuff as I believe they won’t be around much longer anyways. I think as far as phones go, apple products are a status symbol moreso than a phone.
I've sorta trapped myself in a Apple ecosystem through life/family. I like having all my stuff interconnected. I also am a boomer and the idea of learning a new machine scares me (not really, i just can't be bothered). I've had my laptop for almost 7 years. It's barely hanging on, but I'm gonna get every last drip out of this piece of shit. once it finally dies maybe I'll switch to a different system. until then...
If you like it, you like it man. Not for me and my experience with it tells me it never will be
love to worry about viruses on my phone and not getting more than 1 major software update (if im lucky) go android
lol i'm sorry but you have to be extremely bad at technology to get a virus on your phone
I’ve never had one virus on my android. Do you do nothing but watch porn on shady websites brother, or open weird files?
iPhones aren’t phones, they’re status symbols.
Trust me if you want to watch porn, something better than 720 and 1080p does exist man.
The iPhone 6s from 6 years ago is still getting full OS updates while the Pixel 3 from November 2018 is going to stop receiving security updates after 3.
Yes they are receiving updates for certain security modules but so will the iPhone 6s once it stops receiving full OS updates, especially for critical security fixes well after Pixels have been abandoned.
Also I don't trust custom ROMs developers and Safety net has ruined them anyway
That happens sometimes, there are quiet a few models of android phones out there. This isn’t apple where there is only one company who makes all the phones.
I’m sorry man, I can tell you like your apple stuff. I just can’t deal with the shitty specs and the feeling of being locked down.
What i recommend to people here if they can. if you're on android, a good (and not too complicated) option you can look into is LineageOS.
On the website you can check if your brand/type of phone has a compatible version and an active maintainer.
The process isn't too complicated, although you do need a bit of tech knowledge or when installing the new OS you could have issues and if you REALLY fuck it up potentially brick your phone (although i'm not sure that's really possible now, normally you can do a special reboot). So if you know how to use a console/terminal or you have a friend that can help out, it's very easy to do.
It's basically android, but de-google-ified. No google app store (you can install it as well if you want but to me that kinda defeats the point), all libre alternatives to the google apps. F-Droid is a good replacement of the app store and has all the basic stuff you need as well as a bunch of open-source/libre apps or the privacy oriented stuff. You can also copy over the .apk files you've downloaded somewhere else (I use Raccoon to download .apk files from the google app store on my PC and copy them over) and install them on LineageOS as normal. However some apps require the google app store, or are more complicated than a simple .apk, those probably won't work and you'd need to install the google app store.
Since it's not google, it's a very up-to-date android, you have total control over the default apps (normally there's a lot of google stuff you can't remove, or even brand apps), and better privacy controls.
Until we get proper stable linux phones (it's getting there!), that's the best option I've found.
