Comment by pzo
7 days ago
Same. I was kind of slowly preparing myself that I might be switching to android and it seems this might be the final straw. Will wait until Sept to see how new iphone and google pixels will look like but most likely I will do the transition (even though been developing for iOS for more than 10 years.
Sure, it's reasonable to consider a switch. But while Android devices have come a long way in terms of physical design, capabilities, UI/UX, etc, out of the box Apple still offers a more comprehensive, user friendly and privacy focused security solution: lockdown, tighter controls of hardware/software integration, etc. So there's that.
Apple user friendliness only extends as far as you're willing to do things the Apple way. If you want to do something Apple doesn't approve, it's going to be difficult, impossible, or miserable.
Example: file syncing and password management. Possible, but my Nextcloud and Keepass experience was janky. 3rd party Youtube client, impossible. Adblocking - all solutions I tried were terrible to mediocre (around 2020, but I doubt it improved since). On Android I can run any browser I want and install uBlock. Music: I can just dump my collection of mixed format music files (aac, mp3, mpc, flac, wavpack) over USB and play them with foobar2000. Foobar2000 is available on iphone, but needs dumb workarounds to play files not natively supported by Apple. And so on...
If you're balls deep in the Apple ecosystem, you probably have none of these problems. I never allowed myself to get locked in, which also made it very easy to leave ios behind.
Only thing I miss a little is the ios email and calendar clients. They were alright.
I was a diehard Android person for years, and I really really wanted to like it. Even when it dropped calls, failed to even show incoming calls, apps crashed regularly. This was a Google phone on Google Fi, unaltered and supposed to be the "pure" Android experience. My final realization and the impetus for the switch was that Android is an app ghetto; Good apps are designed for iOS first, and half-assedly ported to Android. Android's store has so much trash in it as to make it impossible to find a real app that isn't malware.
I switched to iOS and despite its flaws, the experience is so much better.
> app ghetto
Meanwhile the main reason I stay with Android is because of the ability to sideload, write your own apps, etc. without paying a subscription fee.
Agreed; I will probably be staying with iOS no matter how garish it becomes - Apple has the foundations right.
I can't say I feel the same about macOS before; as a user since the early 1990s, I'm likely moving to Linux rather than Liquid Glass for my personal computer.
Liquid Glass looks better on iPad and iPhone.
On the Mac it is offensive. Vulgar. Disgusting. Loathsome.
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It is a shame because Android has everything they need to be just as good but its fragmentation as a whole just gets in the way of its potential.
I have been using android for maybe 11-12 years and once locked down it great for me. But I suspect less than 1% of users would use these things like this.
Try getting a device like a foldable phone that has no i-land analogs! That will provide a nice way to get benefits from the transition.
Wasn’t there a rumour that the next iPhone will be foldable?
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Lmao. Just some wildly untrue, especially with Pixel phones.
As someone who has daily driven Pixels since the first one but listens to plenty of Apple users: no, Apple really does have it better for most default experiences. Really, the main thing Android still has going for it is that sideloading is easy and I can have a full terminal.
I've tried to escape the walled garden to Android before, and I've given up. No matter which company's phone or what version of Android, it didn't work well as a phone, alarm, and reliable device that I use for stuff like my home security. Things broke on Android like clockwork, and the clock didn't work.
The latest Google pixel devices are specifically blocked from using Wyze devices right now due to a typo in the pixel's configuration files, for example. Stuff like that happens constantly with any phone in the super fragmented Android ecosystem.
>it didn't work well as a phone, alarm, and reliable device
If you google "ios alarm not working" you'll find out alarms on iOS are absolutely not reliable, they are often silent.
Thats interesting. The clock stuff on android has always been the most reliable thing for me. But milage may vary by user.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to jump out of the Apple ecosystem nowadays. I left in 2012 and it was difficult even then.
They are both broken in their own ways. However, on one of those, I have some amount of flexibility/freedom to put in my own fixes/hacks/solutions to make it work. I will pick the additional headache that flexibility brings over being in a straight jacket everytime.
The Pixel 9 with Android 16 QPR Beta 1 is working smooth right now, and looks great. Very polished overall. I would recommend Pixel if you go the Android route as Google's implementation is imo the highest quality compared to others'