That's how Android felt for me. Too many knobs, and a lack of good apps. I'll take Apple's integration over what amounts to nothing any day of the week.

I agree that at some point it can be a bit overwhelming, but I'd take "slightly steeper learning curve" over "literally missing a critical feature I rely on daily" any time.

How can you live without Android's back button/gesture behavior?

I mostly develop for Android devices and use iOS.

I have literally never missed not having a "always-back" button. Where would I want it that a way to go back isn't baked into the flow?

I mean half the Android apps out there have broken backstack implementations anyways so pressing back on Android will do anything from send you back one screen to set your hair on fire and everything in between so...

As another cross platform mobile dev that mainly uses iOS, this is how I feel too. It’s much easier to mentally model things with intra-app and inter-app navigation being entirely separate.

Navigating within apps is frustrating enough between apps that intentionally implement wonky custom stuff for no reason and cross platform apps that don’t obey conventions by nature, the last thing I want is those same apps mucking up otherwise consistent app switcher behavior.

The most common scenario I have is switching from RSS reader into web browser for the full article and back. This is also about 50% of what I do on the phone that's not scrolling web pages vertically.

Isn't that just swiping left and right on the bottom of an iOS device?

(Switches between your current app and last app for reference)

I've been using iphones for a decade and had no idea I could do this...not sure if it's a me problem or an apple problem but discoverability of gesture based shortcuts seems like a difficult challenge

Swiping back to the reader won't close the browser tab.

Oh then that makes this the perfect example of what I mean:

iOS has Safari Services for when an app wants to support visiting a 3rd party site (so you don't want a WebView) without leaving the app.:

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52428a0ae4b0c4...

As you can see a clear "Done" button, that's straightforward enough. Hit it and you go back to the app.

But even better, you can promote it to a normal browser tab by hitting the Safari button at the bottom!

That will transfer the tab to Safari with a transition to make it clear now you are in Safari can use the app switcher to go back and forth.

It's a great example of how the SDK baking explicit back handling into components ends up being better than a generic "always goes back" concept apps have to implement.

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Ironically Android has something similar called Custom Tabs but they're not widely used for multiple reasons: https://medium.com/@vardaansh1/use-chrome-custom-tabs-they-s...

I'm also not sure if they support promotion to a browser tab natively, I'm guessing you have to add your own UI to close it and fire off an intent for the system browser

This sounds worse all the way round.

1. It is a less general solution to a relatively common problem so less beautiful.

2. It probably does not work if your link is a deep link into another app, e.g. Netflix. Especially if that another app can in turn link elsewhere, e.g. IMDB

3. My default browser on Android is Firefox, cause I like my uBlock Origin.

1. What? How is a fleshed out API dedicated to presenting websites "less general"?

2. Are you talking about Custom Tabs or Safari Services? Because Safari Services handles deep links fine...

3. Custom tabs work with Firefox if enabled in Settings

I mean Custom Tabs, like most of Google's efforts on Android start, is a half-baked concept. And like most of Google's efforts on Android, there is a chance that they will actually flesh it out, and there's a chance they might not and it'll just kinda exist and undergo death by a thousand small-but-unaddressed bugs...

SFSafariViewController had its teething issues back in the day but Apple worked on it until it became something something most apps use, most people use, and it's seamless enough they don't know they're using it (especially because it supports everything Safari does, from ad blocking to reader mode)

I am talking about iOS behavior without the back button.

1. showSafariView(), that has Done button, that returns back to you, which is less general than show(appView), that has Back button, that works for any appView, system or not.

2. I do not know iOS. You tell me what the experience would be. On Android in RSS I click a Netflix deeplink, that sends me to the show in Netflix app. There I click IMDB link, that opens IMDB app for the show. After checking out reviews I click Back, that brings me back to the show view in Netflix, I check "Add to Watchlist" here, then Back again, and I am back in my RSS reader. My guess is that Done functionality you mentioned before would stop working after encountering the very first deep link to Netflix, which my guess is will either open Netflix website in Safari popup (bad, because not the app) or open Netflix the app (but that won't have the Done button).

3. Good to know.

What are these good apps? I'd like to check some out.

I don't know if it's worth changing phones over, but Overcast is a really nice podcast player (smart speed works very, very well). Apollo is nice for reddit.

I think some of that might be what you're used to. There are plenty of quality podcast apps on Android, such as PocketCasts. Same for reddit app, there are dozens. Maybe not as flashy but I've been using rif for almost 10 years now and it has been very solid.

RIF is really good, I miss it. I've used Pocket Casts on iOS and it's not as good as Overcast, but people on Android seem to like it. Maybe it's a bad port?

AntennaPod and Slide for Reddit. And I raise by Newpipe and uBlock (in Firefox)!

Yep, I switched to an iPhone 11 and regret it. The hardware feels better but I really dislike the OS experience... very clunky... and CarPlay is miles behind Android Auto.

I'm about to switch in the other direction because there are iOS-only apps that I want to run. Plus, because of higher resale value, iOS devices cost less.

I already have an iPad which is probably my favorite device to use. I might end up taking another look at Android when Google finally releases their Shortcuts clone.

I recently did this, as a long android-only user. I purchased an ipad pro when the M1 came out to replace my windows laptop for content consumption and love it. I thought now was maybe time to switch to an iphone from my pixel 4xl.

Long story short, I returned my iphone 13 pro. I found that, for me, the way I use the ipad and the way I use my phone are completely different. On the ipad I use it almost exclusively to consume content. Websites, youtube, streaming, email (but only using the browser). I found that I use my phone more as a “mobile command station” for my life. I get notifications and react to something, or I use it to launch an app to do something (like my blink camera or thermostat). I constantly scan it for notifications and do something with those. I rarely spend time watching videos or consuming long-form text.

And for those things, at least for me, ios just pales in comparison to Android. Android notifications are just so much better. I can scan them and act from them better than I can on ios.

Lastly (and the straw that broke the camels back), voice dictation on ios is laughably bad compared to Android. I was just becoming annoyed that android seemed to be missing more and more words for me lately, but when I tried to use ios dictation in anything but a perfectly quiet environment it is unusable. I use this a lot, so it was a deal breaker for me.

Quick anecdote, I went to a concert recently before I got my iphone and texted my wife while the canned music was playing before the concert started. It was not as loud as the band, but pretty loud none-the-less. I used voice dictation and just after I did it and scanned it for accuracy, my iphone-using friend said under his breath “that aint gonna work!” right as I hit the send button. I remember him being mildly surprised when I hit send, but didn’t think much of it until a week later when I got my iphone and tried to use it out in the wild in a similar way. I then reflected on that and understood his perspective.

I use voice dictation quite a bit and I haven't really noticed a difference between Siri and Google Assistant with respect to accuracy. I'm not generally in noisy environments though.

I'm very much a software-first person. I bought the iPad to run GoodNotes. It's the only good note taking device I've ever owned. Since then I found Procreate and use it all the time as well. It's an amazing program.

My phone is used mostly for voice calls, text messages, maps, and listening to podcasts. I want to run Things and Overcast on my phone and that's my primary motivation for moving to iOS.

As far as notification go, I generally disable them. I want to know when I get a text message and that's about it.