> The impression I get is that every iPhone user has heard all the arguments before and understand the accuracy of those arguments and its the android users that lack the self awareness in that area and other areas of their life,

This might be the most ironic comment I've read in a long time. 90%+ of users on both platforms are purely religious about their choice, and if there's one thing I can say that most of them have in common, it's (over)confidence that they understand "the other side" while utterly failing to. There are 3 topics that I used to discuss regularly but now avoid with most people because too much processing happens in the Amygdala: religion, politics, and phone religion (aka iphone v. android).

I think it's also worth adding that a lot of "preference" just comes down to choice based on values. If you highly value cohesive user experience, security (especially from own mistakes), and brand recognition/status, more curated app store, then iPhone is a good choice. If you highly value device ownership (for example my device, my choice to sideload or root, ability to run apps that can reach deeper into the device, unlock bootloader and install custom ROMs), price (not really true anymore though), etc then android is for you.

Most people just buy whatever they had last, whatever most of their friends and family have, or whatever is cheap. I doubt more than 10% of people think about it very hard.

I still think the ultimate platform is yet to be out there. It’s foolish in hindsight to religiously fanboy either iOS or Android. There is still no platform that is fully featured, with strong network effect (where needed - which should be less than it is), privacy, security, open source, control in the hands of the user, customization…etc. The idea that users should have to choose one or the other and cannot like all the features is perhaps holding us back.

FWIW that underhanded description of Apple users as idiots who value looks and brand names and can't be trusted with a real computer is... annoyingly old.

In US, iphone possession is 74% of 18-24 year olds, with more planning to when it feels practical/responsible!

its not the early 2000s anymore!

yeah maybe.

In this case its just tech enthusiasts that fall for evangelizing the technical prowess while ignoring that the social aspect of a technically good-enough system is more important to people. tech enthusiasts do this in other areas of their life too. just a heavy correlation, which people experience nationwide.

Android devices have "Nearby Share" now. Works basically the same as Airdrop. I use it to beam documents to my eReader all the time.

If you need to copy a file to a computer all you need is a cable and a decent OS that supports MTP and you can then just drag the file off like a USB drive. It's great and requires no special software unless you like fruit flavored computers.

One of the things I really like about my Samsung phone is I can have an alphabetical ordering of my apps in the drawer. With iOS you have to painstakingly rearrange every app to get that or use the shitty hidden alphabetical scrolling list they finally graced everyone with after 14 years.

I switched from an iPhone XS to Android. XS still works, had a choice, just got tired of Apples shit.

>people have just resorted to ostracizing android users by co-opting iOS' "green bubbles" as a scarlet letter.

What does this mean?

For a long-form answer, Marques Brownlee has a video[0] that discusses the technical, commercial, and social aspects.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuaKzm7Kq9Q

Great video, I watched the whole thing, covers everything

The comments cover other aspects like middle school teachers seeing it first hand amongst students

iOS messaging has end to end encryption by default, when that is enabled the messages are shown within a "blue bubble".

When this is not possible, it falls back to sending normal SMS, which can be read in plain text by third parties in the middle and has no encryption, when that occurs messages are shown within a "green bubble".

Therefore, messaging android users shows a "green bubble". People know its both an android user and unencrypted.

This also results in a worse messaging experience for the iOS users, as all of their other rich media is disabled and handicapped as long as that conversation involves an android user.

Hmm, I have never heard anyone mention "knowing its... unencrypted" I doubt most iOS users would care about that, realistically. Note that the experience is bad in both directions (at least for me in Signal on Android I get to endure a lot of 'so and so loved whole-text-of-previous-message' instead of just a heart emoji - I see that GOOG has improved things Messages recently to parse those, at least)

Right it’s just a convenient scape goat now, for an existing disdain against those people

The thing is, zero people I regularly chat with (SF bay area) use iMessage. Most people in my US friend group use Signal, the rest use Facebook, and many of my international contacts use Whatsapp.

> That's big of you to mention. Agreed, we need a lot more people normalizing prosocial behavior.

I was guilty of being on the Team Linux vs. Team Windows war back in the day and then I had an epiphany! You could like both. You could actually use what suits you when it suits you. Cheers.

more likely because of our major cultural influence from the concept of scarlet letters