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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.
Through the release of the first iPhone to the mid 2010s I'd wager that most consumers agreed that iPhones were superior to Android by most metrics: they featured more support across the board, had more apps, looked nicer, and were considered the premium. Apple pioneered the modern smartphone and had a headstart in getting users hooked into their ecosystem. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in the wealthiest country in the world (and Apple's home country).
That's a huge generalization but I think it resonates true to a degree. Also, anecdotally, I remember that all my school computers were Macs when growing up. I'm sure Apple seeped its tendrils into people's lives a variety of ways. It's not a cake walk for most people to switch ecosystems. As a lifelong Windows user I'll have a panic attack if you asked me to print a document on a Mac; I'm sure its the same vice versa lol
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.
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.
unless you're going to crack your android and install a custom rom (which, with limited exceptions, is extremely risky to do,) your choice is to either use an apple product, or a google-based OS.
Apple has a slick design, and while android (and many of he devices it runs on) aren't awful, it's hard to change. and virtually every mainstream mobile device manufacturer is using some some form of android os with a custom UI, including Huawei (which no officially a fork, because of sanctions.)
everything that's not android or apple is pretty much going to have to be installed custom. (there's a few linux-based things that aren't android, mobian, for example is a mobile-version of debian.)
I'll leave it to the other to rant about why apple might be better than android for privacy and useability, given the caveat of not hacking a custom rom.
I think you vastly overestimate the "freedom" people need with their phone, you are doing the same thing Linux evangelists do, why would anyone use Windows when with just a phew workarounds everything works on Linux too, completely forgetting that average joe doesn't give a fuck about any of that, they want something that just works and Apple is still the best at that.
Personally I am a tinkerer and I still switched to an iPhone, because I need a phone that just works, with android there was always something randomly breaking, and most phones I had to set up to restart every evening otherwise it would just have random glitches in a few days.
I have owned my iphone for close to 2 years now and I can count on one hand how many times I had to restart it, hell I remember having and issue restarting it because I forgot how to do it.
I personally do not trust Google at all. Their entire business model is ads and tracking.
Apple is in no way better.
You're not even making an argument, just an assertion. Are you by chance a software engineer? If you really understand what Google is doing on a technical level, there is no comparison. No they are not the same. No Apple is not just as bad. Just think about it, Google makes their money selling businesses ads. Apple makes their money selling you a phone. The incentives are very different.
Apple also sells ads, their ad business just isn't as big as google's.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corebluetooth/advertising-data
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/
In 2022, Apple generated 4.7 billion U.S. dollars with its global advertising business.
But sure, they're not the same. Apple's advertising is working on you.
The ads are in the app store and about apps. Googles ads are all over the web and they've embedded trackers in every website that call home and tell google what you're up to. Most android apps also have Google libraries in them that track you. Chrome monitors your off Google activity. Gmail extracts purchase receipts from online shopping and monitors your spending to serve ads. Meanwhile, Apple forced app developers to ask for permission to track users and pissed off the entire tech industry. The two are not the same from a user privacy perspective. Apple also does not have trackers all over the web and does not read your email. Also, $4.7 billion is peanuts to Apple. Their annual is roughly $400 billion. Ads for them are a fart in the wind. Google meanwhile makes 75% its money on ads. I don't trust them at all.
I disagree. Apple might not be perfect, but it is better than Google when it comes to ads and tracking. I know my data is encrypted, both on the device and in my cloud. And in the App Store, it tells me exactly what data is being collected by the apps I choose to install.
https://securityaffairs.com/174500/security/apple-removes-icloud-encryption-in-uk.html
Oh yeah, they really care. I guess you can be sure it's encrypted unless... *checks notes... governments require a backdoor.
android user now but basically... it might be that most of us Americans try to take the path of least resistance or whatever doesn't give us headaches. I mean like, almost everything we do (except taxes) are pretty simplified. And even for taxes, we can LITERALLY pay for services to simplify or do it for us ( like wtf, this is kinda stupid). Apple does a good job of making it an easy experience.
easy to use - like an automatic car vs manual car.
popular apps just work - I don't think its a problem now but I remember when some social media apps were just broken on android vs iphone.
a lot of the software looks pretty clean and fancy. Gives it a polished experience.
HARD TO LEAVE - Apple products work better with other apple products. Once you leave, you basically lose out on all the purchases you've made over the years.
Apple store support - life saver for most people
Security updates more consistent.
Hell, trying to adjust from typing with iphone keyboard to android keyboard took longer than expected.
Also our government issues out iphones for fed employees.
I like the user experience. I like the quality of the third party apps available. I like Apple's stated commitment to privacy. I don't trust Google.
My reasons:
Maybe it’s just Samsung that’s trash, I dunno. I tried hard to like android and in principle I should prefer Google’s more open ecosystem. But it just seems to enable every manufacturer of android phones to try to outcompete each other in how awful they can make the experience of owning their products, all in the name of trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Honestly, at this point, the only reason to go with either ecosystem is that Android, for now, allows you to escape Google, to some degree depending on how much work you're willing to put in. IOS/apple doesn't allow that
But, Google is trying hard to get to the same place.
But, ignoring that, apple got there first. That's what it amounts to. The first real smart phone was by Apple, and that gave them a leg up
Not an iphone user, but am intrigued by all the ads the apple people say are on androids. Literally have never seen one, and I've had adjusted androids since the og htcs.
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.
Usamericans usually like to look for "the best", whatever that means, and never accept "second". I assume that they need that to feed their pride.
Apple has managed to make them believe that iPhone products were the best smartphones, and all of Apple's marketing is focused on maintaining that belief.
Came here to say the same thing. Americans are brainwashed from a young age by advertising and classism. They have easily fallen into the advertising that crApple has about some 'superior lifestyle'. And actually crApple is just an over priced UI that attracts idiots. It's a mentality.
The average American is a fucking idiot and half of them are dumber than that
I’m a professional C# developer, and I switched to iPhone in 2020. Mostly I wanted a more controlled, curated App Store for increased confidence in a safe execution environment. I’ll pay the $100/yr for a developer account if I really need to build and run my own code.
The lack of ad block options bugs me. I also don’t use iCloud.
I have doubts about whether this question is asking or proselytizing.
Just use nextdns for ad blocking. You can install your own profile that is basically a pihole at the os level for cell and WiFi traffic. It blocks web ads, but also any trackers embedded in third party apps.
Asking.
Using iPhones is fine.
But I see people being so "SovCit" then go on and use an iPhone, which is just like... wtf lol
I would never use an iPhone if my phone were my primary computing device. But I just make occasional calls and texts, and use a handful of apps (for instance, Nextcloud and Home Assistant connected directly to my home server, bypassing most of Apple’s ecosystem).
For a secondary device, I just want something simple and sturdy that I have to think about as little as possible—and for that specific use case the limitations are a plus.
Honestly, if you can tolerate the Apple ecosystem it works really well, with adequate privacy. My wife and my mother both use them and I recommend it for anyone who isn't a privacy nerd.
If the user isn't willing to jump through hoops to lock shit down, Apple offers a better suite across platforms for privacy and security.
Honestly, if you can tolerate the Apple ecosystem it works really well, with adequate privacy.
Not having firefox browser extensions is a huge dealbreaker tho (because Apple require some safari thing in all the browsers that breaks extentions), like imagine not being able to have uBlock Origin.
Also, I'm a bit of a pirate... Apple app store has no torrent client... 😉
Why would you torrent from your phone?
Wrong tool for the job…
Why do most [insert country here] people use [insert brand from their country here]???
But like... that's because most of the time it's nationalism.
But the thing is America is supposed to be all about "Freedom"
I mean, Americans even defied a resonable thing like wearing masks, but then is okay with not having the freedom to install apps... Not sure how much people actually care about freedom... 🤔
I am an American, use Android and even wore a mask. Most of all, I would have no problems punching a Nazi.
Meh, freedom is just a buzzword that was brainwashed into us at a young age in school and stuff but hardly anyone actually knows what their rights actually are.
As far as phones are concerned, people use them because they look like they are built for children and they are supposedly easier to use. Even though I hate Apple, I can say that they did a decent job on their UI. It's a local brand as well. The times I was in Germany, Mercedes and BMW were super common, from what I saw. (Why do all Germans drive those expensive things???? /s)
Also, please remember we have a ton of sub-cultutes, sub-sub-cultures, many dialects of American English and importantly, a massive amount of land. (Land is important, because more separation breeds major cultural differences.)
There are some places in this country where even I feel like an alien, and I am just an average white dude and I have lived in North Carolina, California, Florida and now Colorado. All of those states are vastly different, culturally.
Most of all, just because I am American, doesn't make me like anyone else here, contrary to what .ml memes say. I am not my government, I dont eat McDonald's 10x a day and I am not a fascist. (I do own a reasonable sized truck though. My wife does a ton of gardening work, so it's logical.)
Don't generalize people by their phones.
Convenience is nationalism
Damn. Why don’t more Americans buy Huawei phones that aren’t available in any stores? Must be nationalist!