Comment by smoldesu
4 years ago
Hacker News users tend to take device choices pretty personally, unfortunately. It seems like the level to which they defend corporations is directly proportional to the amount of money they have sunk into their purchases. If you're looking for sympathy towards how truly reprehensible modern iOS/iPadOS is, you're not going to find it here. The majority will just tell you to get rid of it, since criticism is verboten wherever trillion-dollar companies are concerned.
You are one of many people who go to great pains to inform people on HN about how ‘truly reprehensible’ modern iOS/iPadOS is. Had they listened to you, they might have been saved from their mistake.
What surprises me is that a regular visitor to HN has not seen this opinion expressed. It also seems weird that they wouldn’t know that sideloading was a problem given how many front page stories have either attacked Apple over this policy or defended it.
I have sympathy for anyone who buys something they don’t end up liking. I’m just very surprised that this particular fact was somehow not known to an HN commenter.
> I’m just very surprised that this particular fact was somehow not known to an HN commenter.
Perhaps we misunderstand each other. Of course I have read that sideloading specifically is more difficult on iPadOS; this was not an unknown fact to me. However, that wasn't the sole factor in my choice of device (and if openness was my #1 priority, I could've just asked for (it was a gift) a PineTab).
The usability of the device for day-to-day tasks is the most important, and since I use a lot of apps on my phone, I mistakenly thought that this would also be an important factor w.r.t. usability when it comes to tablets. Therefore, when I read in reviews that the app ecosystem was much worse on other tablet OSes, that pushed me towards iPadOS. Again, privacy was also a factor (when compared to Android).
In 2021, any OS choice is ultimately a balance between usability, privacy and openness. If your last experience with a device class was a decade ago, it can be difficult to balance those factors.
(Now, if the mobile landscape resembled the PC landscape a bit more, trying different OSes wouldn't be so cumbersome. But that's a whole other can of worms...)