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?
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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/
My iPad from 2015 is still getting all the updates. It’s wild.
Exactly.
Owning Apple products feels less wasteful, somehow. I don’t replace them often.
Yeah I think iPad’s are clearly better than any android tablet.
Yeah I don’t like Apple. Though unfortunately, the iPad is the only useful consumer tablet imo. Android tablets seem to only be good for like integrated uses like a construction tablet with custom software.
And i would love my Ipad even more if i could have the option to install a custom rom to have the customization options that i just loose with ipados
I just want my Nintendo DS emulator back on my iPad :(
I still haven’t quite forgiven Google for abandoning owners of the Nexus 5X the second the Pixel came out…
I kept my Nexus 5X until Pixel 4a came out. That was a good phone. I was lucky that the refurbished i got, after suffering the dead after phone too hot demise, actually lasted and it’s still alive as second phone, if needed. Custom ROMs were still a thing. I miss then sometimes or rather i sometimes miss the custom ROM community. Some very dedicated people, lots of asshats and always noobs asking the kind of questions everyone loved.
The 5X was such a garbage device that it makes sense that they’d try to sweep that trash under the rug. I swear I was getting barely more than 40 minutes SoT and it would get stupidly hot if you tried to do anything on it.
I was so happy with my Pixel 1 purchase, Pixel 2 was also a treat. And then I switched to iPhone in 2018 because Google pissed me off when they insisted that the half pink screen on my Pixel 3 was normal and acceptable. I’ve had an iPhone as my daily ever since, but have tried every Pixel since and currently own a 7 as a backup phone.
But the iPhone experience is still overall better, especially since CarPlay is still rock solid compared to Android Auto, which was one of my absolute deciding factors. Apollo was too, but now that’s gone, so if Google could make wireless Android Auto not turn my Pixel 7 into a furnace and improve the battery life in general further for the Pixel 8, I could see me returning to Android.
Only security updates.
OS updates are only 3 years
Iphones get a lot more than 3 updates
Yes that is my point.
Pixels only get 3 major version updates which is less than the iPhone
If you use the stock rom, if you install a custom one you get updates as long as the developers continue working which is quite a pong time for some of the ROMs that exist right now
However you have to take into consideration what the OS updates do on each device.
On iOS, an update also updates all the system apps, meaning Safari, Maps, weather, notes, mail, health, photos, the calculator and so on are hyper dependent on having OS updates for a long time.
On Android, all of those system apps are updated via the play store, and a lot of deeper features can be updated via Google Play services similarly to how Nearby share was able to be back ported to any Android device running 6.0 or newer when it came out recently. Full OS updates are still important for Android, but they aren’t nearly as critical to the overall user experience.
I use an iPhone, but I’d love them to move all system app updates into the App Store for more frequent updates. The only plus side to the way Apple does it is that everyone gets the update at the same time and you don’t have annoying staged rollouts like you do with Google apps.
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.
I will say, some ROMs these days are practically maintenance free. I have been running graphene os for about 3 years now and I have never had issues updsting by just pressing the button.
That is great to hear, too bad manufacturers cannot keep their phones up to date like that.
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.
Literally causing people to get bullied into getting an iphone over stupid chat bubble colors.
Which gets even stupider when you realize apple is being stubborn and that is causing the issue
Absolutely, Apple is being resistant to RCS not because they think iMessage is superior but because they know it weakens their lock in power. I know I’m stating the obvious, but it just annoys me so much.
Not necessarily.
You can get one and try it out, the ecosystem stuff is more enhancement than a detriment if you don’t have them.
Like Apple Watch and my MacBook Air, I can authenticate or unlock the screen using my Apple Watch rather than a password. But that’s just a benefit and I wouldn’t be losing anything but the enhancement if I didn’t have both.
I think they are talkign about if you already have the stuff working with every other device but apple
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
Contrary to Apply making products harder to repair, efficiently locking in to their ecosystem with no way out? Apple ducks consumers every day. I doubt they’d gather all your data for the purpose of utilizing storage space.
I’d rather trust the devil I know than the devil that’s better at hiding it’s evil. Apple isn’t some amazing perfect company that cares about you. Almost everything they do is anti-user, they just do it in a way that apple-only users think is a bonus because they’ve been forced into apple only products already. Not to mention their idiotic pricing.
If you think apple is somehow “trustworthy” or not just as “evil” as Google in any way you’ve let their marketing team fool you.
assuming this is true, for me it’s not what they do with the data it’s just them collecting and keeping data they don’t need.
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.
But then you lose functionality like Android Auto, where on an iPhone you get CarPlay. Android Auto on my Pixel 7 Pro is fine, honestly like as much as CarPlay, but if you install something like Graphene OS, it no longer works.
Yeah but if that’s the price of not being tracked means, I happily say goodbye to android auto. I’m using lineageOS for years and I didn’t notice much missing except Google pay and android auto.
When on iPhone, Apple still tracks you when your privacy settings should’ve disable it.
Why do you need to use a Google app to use NFC payment? Why isn’t there an F-Droid app for that?
No. I read somewhere it needs bank agreements or something. Unfortunately microG doesn’t support it too… I think that’s my biggest con, but as long as banking and money transfer apps works, I don’t mind.
Bank apps are a very big one but I really don’t care I’m not giving in
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.
It really depends on your budget and what you define as an “easy fix.” For tons of people I know, they’d rather send something in for repair or buy a new device than spend twenty minutes searching for a solution.
Which is still bad because you don’t have the option to do it a cheaper way, you have to do the expensive repair or get expensive licensed stuff from apple. You should be able to do it by yourself at a reasonable cost without issues.
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
Enshitification
This isn’t even enshittification, this is just Google still not having their shit together somehow after all these years
They definitely integrated hangouts and had video calling. Apple didn’t open up their ecosystem so you just couldn’t call them. Why has Apple still not provided a service similar to hangouts?
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
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.
I personally just don’t see why you would do a facetime call at all. There isn’t something for me that the video is adding to the conversation, most of the time when people on discord have their camera on i just talk without even looking at the cam. Why do Facetime over normal call?
Because it feels way more like we’re in person when facetiming? Being able to see eachother and show eachother stuff is great. Its much different to discord because you’re focused on eachother not doing other stuff while the video is on the side
Well, I don’t really see the reason for myself still. I understand what your reasoning is but I feel like it’s because i could just visit anyone i would facetime at any time i could because most of them live in cycling distance
Must be another American thing, like blue bubbles. I know plenty of people with iPhones and nobody uses facetime.
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.
Apple’s hardware sales are about 70% of revenue, whereas Google’s are more like 10%. That’s a lot of funding that doesn’t have to come from user data.
Harvesting user data is a symptom, mitm and taking advantage of users is the root of the problem.
Saying they don’t profit much from your data is like saying, “they only kick you in the nuts a little bit.”
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.
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.
The keyboard for password limitation makes sense though as a 3rd party keyboard could act as a malicious keylogger. Forcing the native keyboard prevents that.
Oh for sure. I understand the reasoning. But it’s still a lack of options. While apple has a good track record, they’re still asking me to blindly trust them, and them alone.
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).
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.
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.
Yeah lol
I also never had an android not work out of the box, the setup feels the same as apple complexity wise
As a long time android user I was kind of impressed by the setup process on newer android phones. Easily migrates your data over and sets everything up for you to your liking. Feels very polished.
Well, I buy xiaomi phones and … well, need to root and flash roms. That is only me though, I am sure there are many users that are okay with OEM phone systems.
Heh, I get your issue with xiaomi. I feel like it’s just what you get when buying a chinese phone. MIUI is the absolute worst android ui you can get in terms of advertising, I mean come one who tf advertises IN SYSTEM APPS. But they’re aprettx good platform for custom ROMs and rooting
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.
I know, I’ve used macs/MacBooks before. There are a handful of gestures I can’t get used to. And at this point, I’ve got everything setup, and all the software setup for what I’ve got. I actually really like my surface.
Better Touch Tool was one of my favorite apps when I was still using a Macbook as my daily driver. Complete customization of gesture inputs, keybinds, etc.
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?
(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.
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 :)
I think messages from other iphones show up as green, with messages from android phones showing up as blue. No clue how this interacts with group chats.
Iphone-to-iphone using iMessage and are blue. Iphone-to-SMS are green. Grey in an inbound message irrespective of source.
What difference does the colour of the bubbles make though? Or am I missing an in joke?
Literally everything. iMessage is a real messaging app with all of the bells and whistles. Blue means all of the features you want will work. Green means SMS, which is garbage.
iMessage gets you end to end encryption, read receipts, reactions, larger media sharing, functal group chats, and more.
RCS solves some of the shortcomings of SMS but it’s not a feature that Apple supports.
Wait, so Apple doesn’t support the RCS standard and somehow it’s the non apple user to blame?
Yes, that’s what the whole thing is about. I think most people don’t understand or don’t want to care about the issue so they just want to fix the symptoms without fixing the issue
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!
Have you integrated Home Assistant with HomeKit yet? I’ve yet to make the jump but really need to
I have and for the most part it’s actually really good and responsive… live video feeds aren’t working like I want (no live video, just an updated scene every 30 seconds), but house alarm, lights, garage door, outlets, door locks all work great and all of it is through home assistant then to HomeKit … none of my devices are “HomeKit” compatible, I use mostly z-wave and have home assistant parse the info and tunnel though home
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.
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.
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
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?
Barely lol. Basically just the Fairphone 4 and the OnePlus 6.
I think you’re confusing things. The Fairphone 4 and OnePlus 6 are both regular Android phones, but Android is based on Linux.
Edit: maybe you meant they’re running stock Android instead if a custom version (with bloatware) like Samsung phones.
Other smaller Adroid brands, like Nokia and Motorola, do that as well. I don’t really understand why people still bother with Samsung’s bullshit.
Yeah I meant more Linux friendly. All the software is still in alpha.
It’s a start I guess. Something to keep an eye on.
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!
