Also, while the Play store is an equally ad-riddled and unsearchable hellhole, at least Android does have with F-Droid a high quality alternative. iOS has nothing.
But sure, removing the F-Droid advantage can only hurt Android, the direction of your comment still stands.
App addressable user base is another problem for Google, one that they have mentioned in developer conferences. It’s a big part of why they’ve been trying to ship a tablet and unify android and Chromebook. If Google isn’t careful they could find themselves in a downward spiral situation, stuck between apple on one side, and android forks on the other.
And the last answer is, as always, money
- browser is deemphasized on iOS, and so it’s weaker feature set matters less
- iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation
- on average iOS has significantly wealthier users who tend to be higher return or paying customers (seriously, look it up). This in turn leads companies to invest more heavily in iOS.
- easier integration due to a narrow system services ecosystem (no Google vs Samsung slapfights)
- unified platform advantage (apps written for iOS easily port to the watch and tablet, unlocking larger markets, and justifying greater spend in developing apps)
- apples review process is significantly stricter (for better or for worse)
Yes, Apple doesn’t have something like fdroid, and that’s really disappointing and honestly a legitimate dealbreaker for a lot of people
It's been a while since I was last using Android, but first-party Apple apps no longer meet my standards for "polished".
e.g. type this sequence into the calculator:
[2] [-] [4] [=] [x²] [=]
The desktop Contacts app has been putting invisible LTR and RTL codes around phone numbers for years now, breaking web forms when auto-entered. The mobile version refreshes specific contacts several times in a row to add no new content, preventing copy from working while it does so.
The MacOS Safari translation button appears on the left of the omni-bar, until you click it, at which point it instantly moves to the right and your click turns out to have been on the button that the left-side translation button had hidden. Deleting a selection of items from browsing history is limited to about 5 items per second, as it deletes one then rebuilds the entire list before deleting the next.
If I'm listening to a podcast on headpones and an alarm goes off, it doesn't play the alarm through my headphones, it plays on device speakers only.
Podcast app's "Up Next" is a magical mystery list that can't be disabled or guided.
The "Do Not Disturb" mode can be activated unexpectedly, leading to missed calls, and cannot be deleted.
Localisation is inconsistent at every level, including system share sheet and behaviour of decimal separators.
I could go on, but you get the point. Apple's quality control just isn't visible in the software at this point.
When I do those exact keypresses I get the correct answer.
Famously, "it works for me" is not how high quality software happens.
Can you post a recording of what you’re seeing?
Can you show what you’re seeing?
That's iOS 18.5, maybe they fixed it in later versions
Works perfectly for me.
Most calculators, even CAS ones, simply get this always right. But sadly this is not the first "desktop" calculator that I see getting this completely wrong. And it makes some results outright wrong!
>>> 2-4
-2
>>> _**2
4It's the fact Euro carriers are less likely to subsidize or finance the phone. And realistically, a $500 phone is pretty good these days.
In Canada (where phones are subsidized and/or financed) there's very few budget Android phones too. Almost all Samsung flagships, Pixels, etc...
That's precisely the OP's point. They gimped their browser so there's bigger incentive to use their proprietary system frameworks.
> iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation
That's nonsense. What year are you from? I've heard this like 10 years ago when there only 1 or 2 current iPhone models in circulation.
> on average iOS has significantly wealthier users who tend to be higher return or paying customers (seriously, look it up). This in turn leads companies to invest more heavily in iOS.
If you offer subscription service, like Netflix/HBO/Nest or whatever, your main goal is volume, not how wealthy your demographic is.
> easier integration due to a narrow system services ecosystem (no Google vs Samsung slapfights)
Easier integration with what?
> unified platform advantage (apps written for iOS easily port to the watch and tablet, unlocking larger markets, and justifying greater spend in developing apps)
That's like Android's moat from the start, not bolted on during some 10+ major versions like on iOS. And it works much better, Android apps are truly the same apps. Not gimped, cut off things like Instagram on iOS (is it even fixed now?).
> apples review process is significantly stricter (for better or for worse)
Both are shit these days due to volume of shovelware produced.
The real problem is that Android vendors mess up with the OS in weird ways by adding custom ultra battery savers, removing APIs etc. which is much less predictable than dealing with a few Apple devices, that are more homogenous.
Then many vendors ship their own apps which are buggy and you need to know that vendor's Z Calendar app has a weird bug to account for.
For example
> That's nonsense. What year are you from? I've heard this like 10 years ago when there only 1 or 2 current iPhone models in circulation.
What? Models? Is that how you think? Screen sizes? Resolution? That’s so… 2015.
Apple has kept consistent scaling factors across their phones, laptops, and tablets. That alone counts for a ton of saved data effort. Device ratios are also generally consistent.
Android… well, not much needs to be said. It impacts the developer experience in a substantial way.
> If you offer subscription service, like Netflix/HBO/Nest or whatever, your main goal is volume, not how wealthy your demographic is.
Ironically making my point for me without realizing it (wealthier users sub more) AND dismissing the massive market that smaller services exist in. Incredible two for one miss.
> That's like Android's moat from the start, not bolted on during some 10+ major versions like on iOS.
A moat they squandered. Look at platform tablet adoption. It’s dire for Google now.
As for “bolted on”? lol.
I know the mobile os holy wars always activate posts like this, but for some people it’s simply impossible that despite some visible missteps, Apple has been out executing Google for quite some time now.
Your BIO on HN is:
> I HAVEN'T SHOWERED AT ALL! THAT'S WHY I REEK! WORKING IN FINTECH! AIN'T SHAVED IN WEEKS! POUR CRUMBS FROM MY KEYBOARD! THAT'S WHAT I EAT! WROTE A CURRENCY LIBRARY! 3RD TIME THIS WEEK! LURKING HN! I PREFER /b/! IN MOM'S BASEMENT! I'M THIRTY THREE! IT'S 3'O'CLOCK AM! THAT'S WHEN I SLEEP! AH!!!! COME ON FUCK A GUY!!!!
What level of credibility are you seeking?
I didn’t realize I needed to seek credibility. Seems kind of sad to have to read someone’s hn profile to decide if their post has merit or not
This is especially relevant for the camera, but also various other sensors and hardware modules that exist inside these phones.
That said, in recent years there are just a number of other areas that android is much better at such as deeper AI integration, which goes back to even prior to the current LLM craze.
The apps that are more specialized to reach OS tend to prioritize iOS because if you look at app revenue, iOS users wildly outspend Android users. At least this was true when i was doing mobile shit a couple years ago
That doesn’t mean the android app sucks, but it’s usually given lower priority. New features and updates will usually hit iOS version sooner and things like that
Almost all of the prosumer apps on iOS offer a consistently better experience. This is maybe less relevant on phones than on tablets, but music production, video editing, digital painting and drafting, etc...
So for people who don't want to use computers. I cannot work with a tablet or phone. I need a computer.
People pretend this is a perfectly acceptable workfow. It is not.
The pictures would have to be dramatically better than those made by phones. They are not.
I shoot, review on the much larger phone screen, click share and chose from countless options to publish immediately. OR edit it a bit and enjoy the same.
I also never consciously bring the phone, it's just there in my pocket. Interesting things happen, you unholster it and start shooting. The real camera is more like guard duty. You sit there waiting for the interesting shot. Sometimes that works out and some of those times the extra quality is actually visible and some of that time it is totally worth it. The rest of the time I wonder what it is I think I'm doing.
Or open the app on your smartphone (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.canon.ic...), connect to the camera through WiFi, and copy the photos directly.
It's just a plain worse experience to just some extremely good phones like the iPhones with pro camera apps
I want dedicated cameras to offer a superior experience. In stead it is quite bad.
In order to publish one should first disconnect the internet?
I have to put down the camera and pick up the competing device?
My absolute favorite annoyance with my cameras is the lack of charging over USB. After taking a good amount of pictures I have to guess if there is enough battery left to transfer the images to the computer.
Not that PCs or laptops offer very good charging power. This because there is little demand.
It seems in order to make the superior experience the camera maker should also make phones and/or laptops? I have no idea really.
All I know is that my phone has 100W charging. I can almost immediately return to the front. The camera does have swappable batteries going for it but that I have to remove it from the tripod to reload it won't win the war.
The multiple lenses and the processing power make smartphones wildly better than almost any consumer camera, particularly for someone without professional photography skills. A professional camera in the hands of a professional photographer can do better, but that means the market has changed from "consumers buy consumer cameras, professionals buy professional cameras" to "consumers use the camera that's always in their pocket and get surprisingly good results, professionals buy professional cameras".
There are benefits to larger sensors, but the best camera is the one you have in-hand.
Apple’s camera(s) and color science is fantastic. The black magic app in particular shows off their capability.
Not sure what I'd want more from an iPad.
It is true that it has slightly more apps, but realistically all I need is there.
I agree in several cases, but the question here wasn't "are they better than PC equivalents", it was "are they better than what's available on Android"
By that token, touchscreen laptops will replace the iPad any day now.
I think the preeminent issue is that touch-native UIs are very imprecise and clunky by nature. The iPad makes a great MIDI controller; it's an awful mixer or plugin host compared to a regular laptop running regular PC plugins. Buying a mouse or keyboard won't port Omnisphere or the U-He plugins to iPad. I doubt the market will ever "catch up" in that regard.
You know what they say about assuming.
Everything else I agree with, but the Android camera APIs do not allow developers to build good device independent camera apps the way they are available on iOS.
* not all cameras being available
* stabilisation not working
* 60 FPS unavailable
This is incorrect. The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly.
Sure the best way would be for people not to use them, but if you "have" to, then it's better to use those on IOS.
But one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518866
AFAIK Graphene is oriented towards strong device security with privacy as more of a side effect.
Which I believe is GrapheneOS' argument when people praise microG: microG being open source does not fundamentally add privacy: apps using microG will phone to Google's servers (that's the whole point of microG). What microG solves is that it removes the Play Services that are root on your device, and it turns out that sandboxed Play Services do that as well.
> The idea for more privacy is you run open source apps instead that just don't collect data.
Yep exactly, I just wanted to add about the sandboxed Play Services, because it was not obvious to me at first :)
Grapheneos doesn't prevent the installed apps fingerprinting you linked either.
Honestly the state of anti-fingerprinting (app, browser, and otherwise) is fairly abysmal but that's hardly limited to android or even mobile as a whole.
But there's no evidence that stock android leaks apps installed across profiles? The link you provided doesn't discuss profiles at all, and stock android also has private space and work profile just like grapheneos.
Hmm... the sandboxing is a security feature, it's not there to prevent tracking (not sure what "fingerprinting" includes here). The sandboxing of Android is actually pretty good (a lot better than, say, desktop OSes).
There is pretty much nothing you can do against an app requesting e.g. your location data and sending it to their servers. Fundamentally, the whole goal of apps is that they can technically do that. Then you have to choose apps you trust, and it's easier to trust open source apps.
What GrapheneOS brings in terms of sandboxing is that the Play Services run sandboxed like normal apps. Whereas on Android, the Play Services run with system permissions.
> The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly.
I seriously doubt this. I agree that this is the perception but anyone working in the mobile space on both platforms for the past ~2 years will know Google is a lot more hard nosed in reviewing apps for privacy concerns than Apple these days (I say this negatively, there is a middle ground and Apple is much closer to it - Google is just friction seemingly in an attempt to lose their bad reputation).
In contrast, on iOS I get prompted to allow or deny access to my information when the app tries calling Apple’s API to fetch that information.
For example, if an app wants access to my contacts to find other people using the app. On iOS I can simply say “no” when it prompts me to allow it to read my contacts. I lose out on that feature to find other people using the app, which I don’t care about, but I can still use the rest of the app. On Android it seemed like by installing the app, I had already agreed to give up my contacts… it was all or nothing. If I don’t like one privacy compromising feature, I couldn’t use the app at all.
Android may have improved this in the last few years, but I found it to be a dealbreaker for the entire platform.
Sounds like it was years ago... I remember that it was being introduced like... more than a decade ago? Of course maybe it took longer than iOS because of how Android works. iOS can just force everybody to use liquid glass with one update, Android has to think more about backward compatibility.
I could agree with that, Apple is more picky. Now personally, if an app does that, I uninstall it.
But technically, the Android rules are that you shouldn't do that, and when you request a permission you need to explain to the user why you request it.
Android has to deal with tons of devices, and allow developers to update their tooling while supporting older devices. I actually find it quite impressive how they manage to do that. Must be difficult.
Source?
> Meta devised an ingenious system (“localhost tracking”) that bypassed Android’s sandbox protections to identify you while browsing on your mobile phone — even if you used a VPN, the browser’s incognito mode, and refused or deleted cookies in every session.
Another example is Sonos, where the iOS app contains TruePlay to tune your speakers. They can do this because there is relatively few iPhone models (microphones). But this is a general, noticeable trend, where developers will add more / better / polished features to the iOS app.
Social media apps have historically been worse in Android, because of lax app and privacy controls.
> What else is there, where is the advantage?
Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone.
Since some updates ago, my keyboard is still broken if I type too fast, and autocorrect been essentially broken for the same amount of time. Must be happening for ~years now, still waiting for a new update to finally fix it.
At least on Android you can change the keyboard to something else if you'd like, instead of being stuck with what your OS developer forces on you. Wish I had that option now.
I had to give ap on a swiftkey iOS for that reason
I mean, one could say the exact same thing but swapping Google with Apple.
Whichever one you think is worse is really just a reflection of your own personal values. I value computing freedom above all.
So perhaps you should consider switching to GNU/Linux phones.
Apple’s core business is selling hardware. Their services revenue is not even close to their hardware revenue.
You buy a phone, and you're forever forced into buying only their peripherals.
You could say that there are Apple devices that do not work well or don’t work at all without another Apple device, and off the top of my head I would say the only ones are the Watch and the HomePod, but most alternative devices work fine with Apple ones, e.g Chromecast, Garmin watches, Google Home hubs, etc.
And even so, the same could be said about Android only features and devices, e.g. Samsung Watch doesn’t work without an Android phone, Google Earbuds are feature capped on iPhone, etc.
IMO, if we are looking at rent seeking behaviors, Google shoving Gemini down the throats of Google Home users, with no chance of rolling back if they don’t like it, is way worse.
Did you get rid of all your micro USB cables and devices once the transition to USB-C began for Android?
You're literally describing Apple's business model.
Google most profitable business line is ads. They profit from literally knowing everything about you, then selling access to that to ad bidders. Apple makes the most money from devices. It is not the same.
Then why is it that they advertise? We just last week had a thread about how the Apple app store is making ads blend in more with organic results. So not only are they advertising to users (which admittedly was news to me), they are engaging in dark patterns to make those ads more enticing. It doesn't seem like being locked into the Apple ecosystem (and paying their tax on hardware) is actually benefiting the users.
How's that different than Google Messages being exclusive to Android?
People on Android I’ve run into seem to have a half dozen apps and use anything but the built in messaging.
A few months ago while on a trip I ran into an older couple that wanted some picture I took in a place they weren’t physically up to going. They were not tech savvy at all. Had they been on iOS, they would have just been using Messages and it would have been easy. They had Android, and the guy opened about 5 or 6 different messaging apps, not really knowing what any of them were, it seemed like a real mess. I sent them using Messages over RCS, assuming they’d go to Google Messages, or whatever the default equivalent standard app is for Google (they seem to have changed it a dozen times). It could be that the pictures were taking a while to send, my phone showed they sent, but he had no idea where to look or where they might have went, despite having so many messaging apps. I hope he is able to find them or they came through with a notification once he had a better single.
Having one good app that everyone uses is better than the default app being sub-par, or so constantly in flux that the users and smattered about to dozens of different apps that can’t talk to each other.
Whenever there is an app with full feature parity (WhatsApp) you assume at best it can be equal, based on nothing. You have specific apps that work for you, and that's great, but my practical experience is much different: whenever I haven't had a choice in an app (think banking apps, carrier apps, local library apps, the Covid apps) the experience has been much better on Apple. Whenever there is a choice in apps, they're often cross-written in something that allows easy porting, and very similar, or the native Apple solution is much smoother. It's rare that an app just feels better on Android, and usually limited to cases where a specific app is only available on Android or, you know, Google.
How can whatsapp be better? Android at least has features like scoped storage.
Where is the ios equivalent of newpipe? Where is the iOS equivalent of pojavlauncher? where is the iOS equivalent of libretorrent or syncthing?
Open source is essentially banned on iOS.
What is the advantage of iOS? "Feels smoother"? Totally subjective.
iOS isn't particularly open source friendly, but mostly people don't do it because of personal incentives, not because it can't be done.
It's subjective, and I get that, but what you miss is that features are subjective too. Missing parity apps are only relevant when you care about that feature; at no point in my life have I ever thought my life would be better or more convenient if I could only torrent on my phone.
But having an app that is responsive and works well has made my life better. Standing outside a bar in the rain trying to get a stupid Covid app to work, not work well, just work, on Android has made my life worse.
(Ironically, I've kind of noticed this is part of the Unix ethos writ small: do one thing and do it well. It's not exact, and iOS for sure has tons of crud everything apps. And they sure don't work together! I just think it's amusing.)
I don't think iOS is less feature rich except in some specific areas, like web browsers, but you can see in the extreme example that if you could use any web browser for 20 minutes before running out of battery vs safari for hours, one is clearly better. Then you're just haggling over scale. Having the choice to use bad options is not really a choice, unless you have to eg for certain functionality.
And like, in other contexts this isn't even a debate. You talk about the useless feature bloat of Microsoft Word and the associated UI crud, and people are like 'yeah'. But in this context people will straight up make an argument that n+1 features better than n features.
I researched iOS vs Android last year so some of my info may be out of date but this is what I collected.
Apple iOS exclusives (or earlier app versions because devs prioritized iOS):
ChatGPT iOS app -2 months before Android
Sora -2 months before 2025-11 Android
Bluesky iOS app -2 months before Android (February 2023 iOS invitation-only beta; April 2023, it was released for Android)
Blackmagic Design camera 2023-09-15 -9 months before Android 2024-06-24
Halide camera app https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/17klq40/what_are_some_good_examples_of_iphoneexclusive/k7efznt/
Zoom F6 https://zoomcorp.com/en/us/software-product-page/software-sub-cat/F6-control-app/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/f6-control/id1464118916
Godox Light https://www.diyphotography.net/godox-finally-launches-android-app-for-the-a1-but-only-for-some-phones/
ForeFlight Mobile https://support.foreflight.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004919307-Does-ForeFlight-Mobile-work-on-Android-devices https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1883eya/the_authoritative_answer_to_why_isnt_foreflight/
Adobe Fresco
Procreate
FlexRadio SmartSDR SSDR 2023-10-27T13:15:09+00:00 https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8029186/smartsdr-for-android-device
TouchDRO for milling
Amazon Fire Stick, music workstations, sewing machine GUI, geology soil tester, etc
Also Android has a bigger market share in the world than iOS, by a lot.
The tone of that seems like you thought I was taking the discussion into fanboy evangelism and therefore Android needed to be defended. That wasn't the intent and I already tried to downplay my comment by stating the iOS ecosystem specifics do not matter to 99% of mainstream users. Yes, everybody on HN already knows Android has a much bigger market share.
The point was simply to inform the gp asking the question about iOS that there are apps and niches he may not be aware of. Nobody's trying to convince any reader of switching to iOS or that "iOS is superior" ... or vice versa!
You answered to:
>> I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore.
With a list of apps, some of which only listed because they got Android support a few months later. And some of which I have never heard of (SmartSDR?).
I get why those apps matter to you, but it feels a bit arbitrary. While the quote refers to something that was more general (which suggests that "at a point, iOS had a lot more quality apps"). I am just saying that the answer "no but I checked the app I like on iOS and a handful of them don't exist on Android" was kind of one anecdotal data point in the discussion.
And my point about Android having a bigger market share was that my intuition is that probably popular apps end up on Android eventually, or alternatives exist.
I honestly really don't care if people prefer iOS, Android, GrapheneOS, or a Linux for mobile distro.
No, you don't get why it matters to me. You assuming my comment was just a list of my favorite apps is way off base. To be clear, I have never installed nor use any of those apps on either iOS nor Android.
So if I don't have any personal connection to those apps, why do I have that list handy?!? Because I was researching possible coding strategies for a new smartphone app:
- have 2 separate native mobile codebases (Swift AND Kotlin) from the start and therefore can release at the same time on both Apple App Store and Google Play. Difficult and expensive.
- or start with deliberate handicap of just 1 native codebase (e.g. iOS-only for initial launch) and see if it can attract revenue/funding to pay for the other native codebase (e.g. then Android). Or do the reverse of Android-first-then-iOS. The drawback is a clone app could quickly show up on the platform I didn't code for.
- or 1 cross-platform toolkit with something like React Native which is what Meta and Microsoft Office apps like Outlook did.
That was why and how that list was created. The purpose was to get enough industry examples to form a generalization of what others did. I often do software research and my notes let me make lists about it. (Another previous example listing software I don't use but I do know the monthly costs : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42331312)
I thought the iOS apps list was a neutral comment full of factual information and also counterbalanced with the areas where Android has an enormous influence. Yet somehow, my comment is still interpreted as some type of smear on Android. If you're confused about downvotes, I am too!
If you go back to the gp's comment I replied to, he literally asked: >"What else is there, where is the advantage?"
This thread is full of people replying with examples of the "what else". How could any of us seriously answer that question without the answers being criticized as "arbitrary" ?
Well I am saying that it is a list of apps I have never used (if I have heard of them at all), so it sounds arbitrary for a comparison between iOS and Android.
> Because I was researching possible coding strategies for a new smartphone app
Sure, yeah, it makes sense there. I just don't feel like "ChatGPT released their Android app 2 months after iOS means that iOS is better in terms of apps".
Ads running on premium devices are worth more to apps (and therefore the platforms). Users on premium devices pay more in subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Recently on HN: https://www.bugsappleloves.com/
Are we living in the same universe? We manage a fleet of tablets (both Apple and Android) for a healthcare company whose EMR is web-based. And because of that Sarafi has made our lives miserable. So much so that we're migrating to Chromebooks.
I've been developing for the web for 15 years. The first half was spent battling Internet Explorer. Now it's Safari.
I didn't take WebUSB seriously until I steered someone to flashing a small firmware onto something and they could do it straight from the browser! And it was a nice workflow too, just a few button and a permission click.
Two other examples I can think of are flashing Via (keyboard) firmware and Poweramp using WebADB via WebUSB to make gaining certain permissions very easy for the layman. I imagine it's gonna get more and more user in enterprise too.
Firefox is seriously behind by refusing to implement it.
Consider the fact that Chromium has to specifically blacklist Yubikey and other known WebAuthn vendor IDs, otherwise any website could talk to your Yubikey pretending to be a browser and bypass your 2FA on third party domains.
I'm conflicted on WebUSB because it's convenient but on the balance I think it's too dangerous to expose to the general public. I don't know how it could be made safer without sacrificing its utility and convenience.
On top of that, straight from Yubico's site:
".. The user must approve access on a per website, per device basis .."
This isn't any more a security hole than people clicking "yes" on UAC prompts that try to install malware.
Of course, but a phishing website "fake-bank.com" could collect user's username, password, and then prompt them to touch their yubikey. This wouldn't trigger any alarm bells because it's part of the expected flow.
> This isn't any more a security hole than people clicking "yes" on UAC prompts that try to install malware.
Yes it is. The only reason why Yubikeys are immune to phishing and TOTP codes aren't is because a trusted component (the browser) accurately informs the security key about the website origin. When a phishing website at "fake-bank.com" is allowed to directly communicate with the security key there's nothing stopping it from requesting credentials for "bank.com"
You are right that it was a security hole in Chrome <67. Which is almost a decade in the past by now.
Or simple things like supporting 100vh consistently. Is that estoric?
Now you have a crappy app that only works on some devices, and now with no tabs, no links, text you cannot select anymore because they used the wrong component, etc.
Ugh.
This is such a wild, absolute statement it's not even worth discussing this with you anymore.
For values of “just work” close to 0.
Make a picture, connect with a Windows PC, iOS needs a password, then the picture is not visible to the PC, disconnect, go with Apple photos to look at the picture, repeat connecting, with password, now it is visible.
Try to set up a hotspot, there is no button to turn the hotspot on/off.
So yes, it “just works"
There is. You can even put it on the settings drawer. Look for "personal hotspot".
I don't have a mac anymore, but IIRC you could even turn it on from the paired mac. This definitely still works between iphones. When I take out my old iphone from the drawer to use as a GPS on my bike, with no sim card, it will connect to my regular iphone's hotspot automatically.
I’m confused, which button? Do Android phones come with a physical button to enable hotspot?
To give examples:
- https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-photos-update-to-reac...
- https://www.t3.com/tech/iphones/google-maps-gets-an-iphone-u...
Both of the above are updates to Google apps that released on iOS but are planned on Android. Haven't seen any examples of the reverse.
Not for me at least usually (exception might be something like an rpg game expanding the world), apps nagging to get updated is annoying in fact.
There is no nagging. Apps auto-update on iOS, and have for years. I had 15 apps update in the last week. There was no nagging or notifications. It just happens.
My only gripe is that they seem to want to update right after I take it off the charger in the morning, instead of at night. But I only actually notice this once or twice per year, if I go to use an app that’s in the process of installing within the first few minutes of waking up.
"...support for a dynamic light mode. Instead of always viewing photos with a black background, Google Photos will use the light mode or dark mode background that you have set for your device's system theme."
This is literally one IF statement. The sentence is longer than the code.
Just one example, but aviation.
Foreflight is iOS-only. Literally the only reason I have iOS devices is because of app availability in this category.
I still think Overcast is nicer to use than Antenna Pod.
Microsoft Office apps work much better on iDevices, in my experience. (I know they exist for Android, but I've never had much luck editing there, where it actually works pretty nicely on iDevices.)
I don't game much, but my kids like gaming on iDevices much better than Android. (I have an Android tablet that I use for testing things, and they consistently reject it in favor of iPhone or iPad.)
Flowkey (music instruction app) works much better with my MIDI keyboard on iDevices than on Android (where it doesn't work and has to resort to microphone, which is buggy as hell).
I'm sure some of this is just a matter of the platform being more polished in general, but these are some apps that keep people in my house on iDevices despite having plenty of access to Android. The quality of the Youtube app doesn't move anyone, nor do the browsers.
firefox with adblock is the high quality youtube app
Also iOS still has a community of iOS only indie devs that publish polished apps for iOS, it's very common to find very popular iOS app with very curated UX that are exclusive to that platform and have a good fanbase.
Android: have laptop that can do virtualization (...so basically ever laptop that can also do this:) and have enough ram to do run Android studio. Then you theoretically also need an Android device but even that's just because I assume you want to use the app you're making. That's it.
iOS: $100/yr entry fee, plus you need Apple hardware, plus a "server" mode Apple hardware (Mac mini?) if you want to alt store and I assume your main device is a laptop.
Just the money thing and the hardware thing is a huge stumbling block. I know it's rounding error for any even semi serious business but also let's be real, a ton of very important software is basically run on the budget of "the software devs main job and/or EU welfare state benefits".
Apps have terrible reliability too. I just wanted to order a pizza, the restaurant website offered a button for the play store and app store.
There it said the app was for an outdated version of Android.
Perhaps it had been like that for a long time? But lets imagine it happened today. Where are you to get your orders from? Ahh yes, the website.
If apps didn't get the icon on the home screen 90% wouldn't have a reason to exist.
Bunch of pictures with descriptions and an add to cart button. One shouldn't even need to write code, it should be as simple and obvious as serving a document. In stead you need a full time carpenter to keep the store running. The counter and shelves spontaneously collapse, doors regularly get stuck, light fixtures rain down from the ceiling.
People trying to sell pizza deserve better, we can do better.
Maybe they can keep the lights on with those 30%, I guess.
Audio, and it's not even close. On iPadOS you get full-fledged DAWs like Cubasis and Logic.
That made me realize how little I go to the Play store these days to just browse compared to the early days of Android.
I personally can't stand Apple products ... dbut with Google doing their crap and Samsung acting like Microsoft with all the crap they load in I have to disable just to make the phone usable; I've seriously thought about moving to iPhone the past couple of years.
Safari works fine. 99% of users legitimately do not give a fuck.
In that context, it made sense because they were kids, but also, these platforms were new with not much information out there, and the users were basically forced to pick one platform or the other because of the diminishing returns from owning both. 15 years ago, a PS3 or an Xbox 360 cost around $500, which adjusted for inflation is around $800 today. Not worth dropping an extra $800 for a few exclusive titles.
In the context of Android and iOS, you can gain access to both of these platforms quite easily... I mean, presumably, you already own an Android or iOS device already. For $150 you can get a decent device on the used market. Not state-of-the-art, but pretty good, all things considered. And with that you can gain a holistic perspective.
I seriously just don't get how you can stay faithful to either Android or iOS. They both are awful. I sort of see it as a necessary evil, pick your poison sort of thing. But some people get Stockholm Syndrome and never bother to try the alternatives I guess? I find that really odd.
Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago, they are so arrogant they think the audience is now fully captive.
It is, for the large sub-$800 segment of the smartphone market.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-16e
Which is still a valid argument, the number is just lower. And the UX on these sub 600 devices have definitely gotten worse over the last 5 years too... Likely because Google isn't really targeting that price point anymore, so Android isn't getting enough optimization to be viable on underpowered devices.
That was different in 2010-2020
This is why with Pixel they're focusing on competing with the iPhone, they want people to use Android so there is no point in competing with other Android manufacturer.
The chinese are mostly adding skins on top, not developing the core of the operating system.
There is however a chinese fork of android (state sponsored), but it has not gotten wide market adoption in china either to my knowledge, but i dont live in china so i'm open to be corrected.
Finally, even if that OS has gotten widely adopted in china - it IS a fork. the changes are not being upstreamed to android, hence irrelevant to the discussion on this forum.
The biggest Android market (internationally) are Chinese phones. If Google suddenly decided Play Store should be the only way to install apps, that doesn't affect Huawei and Xiaomi phones at all, they don't ship with Play Store and Play Services in the first place.
This isn't even a China-exclusive strategy, Samsung does the same with their Galaxy Store.
There must be a reason why Aurora Store is being advertised, though. Why would they do that if they could just pre-install Google Play Store and standard Google applications.
Update: End of 2018, I bought a Huawei phone with GApps. I remember that two or three generations later, Huawei was not allowed to include GApps anymore.
Chinese telephones legally imported usually have them in most relevant big markets like Indonesia, India, Brazil, etc.
The reason they probably have them preinstalled over there is because they don't care about licensing so they can freely preload whatever they want. At least that's how it was with netbooks in the early 2000s that they were selling loaded with MS Office, Windows, even Adobe, of course with no COA stickers.
But the same manufacturers sell Android phones with Play services in Europe, Japan, India, Indonesia, etc.
the audience is captive. Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own). Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?
Google behave in ways that they think makes them more profit. When users cannot migrate (nor even threaten to), then it simply means they can do this.
Not wanting and not having a choice are two different things.
> Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own)
My wife uses ddg and outlook, she's non-technical. I convinced her to use ddg but she's always used outlook/hotmail.
As a general statement, sure. But if we are talking about mobile phones this is a very privileged and unrealistic point of view.
According to chatgpt, 70-80% of mobile phone sold worldwide every year cost less than the cheaper iPhone.
Some people could probably stretch their budget and get the cheapest iPhone, but otherwise it seems safe to conclude that more than 50% of people simply have no choice.
People do stretch their budget when they really feel the need for it (and the poorest you are the more you'll want to prove you're not poor by buying a status symbol), also the second hand market is an easy way to get a cheap iPhone. Sure, it won't be the latest model...
My mom too. The difference though is that they have us. Most people don't.
The strategy of doing everything you can to make sure your customers truly and utterly despise you and want to spit in your face is probably not productive.
I've been on Kimi now for 3 months. I rarely used Google in that time. Kimi is largely free though sometimes when I run of the free quota I fallback to DeepSeek/Perplexity. I have no idea where they are getting their index from though.
> Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own).
There is microsoft/apple/yahoo mailboxes. However, I think most people should pay for their email especially that it's cheap and also critical (2FA).
> Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?
Firefox is a solid fallback and also webkit (Apple) is now basically a different browser (ported to Linux on GNOME Web). Not the best situation though it could be worse (given Firefox situation).
For me personally, the only two things I still use Google for are chromium and maps. I am unlikely to move from Chromium anytime soon but might consider alternative for maps (though might still need maps for reviews/photos/street view).
I am the most bullish I've ever been on Google losing its monopoly especially after they botched AI and hyper-scaling.
Can I run an ad blocker in Android's Chrome? I can in Firefox
Yes, type yahoo.com into your browser, or install an app. Non-technical people love installing apps on their phones.
>Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own).
Yes, there are hundreds of good e-mail providers to use instead of Gmail. Easy for the non-technical person to use.
In Chrome on Android (and yeah, on desktop too) you just go into "Settings" and change your default search engine. I can choose between Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Yandex, or DuckDuckGo.
There are also custom searches through Wikipedia and other resources. You can use little shortcuts to get to almost any custom search you set up in advance.
This has been configurable by the user for a long, long, long time. This is not a surprise or a concession. This is built-in stuff by Google for Chrome. (Edge too, of course.)
Changing your browser, you can do, but it won't be comfortable. I have Edge installed on my Android, but it is not possible to run natively on Chromebook and the Android emulation is bad. I will not set Edge to my Default Browser because it messes things up. It is not a great experience to change your Default Browser on Android. I just go with Chrome and use Edge for specific tasks and topics.
You can set up all kinds of email services in the Gmail app, or you can install a native app. I use Outlook in both of those ways, and it's fine.
See it from the perspective of a non-technical user:
1. I install the Yahoo Search app
2. When I want to search I poke the Yahoo icon on my home screen.
Or:
1. I open my browser.
2. I poke Yahoo on the grid of suggested sites.
There are lots of non-technical users who navigate purely by doing a "google search" on whatever domain they're aiming for, too. Nobody said they were efficient about it.
It actually is, it just sounds more like it's Edge that isn't a great experience.
I've had Vivaldi as default for awhile now and it's great, everything is as seamless as using Chrome.
I think your issue is trying to switch off of Chrome while using a Chromebook.
The browsing experience without constant upselling some trash and proper adblockers are magnitudes better.
I'd still choose Firefox over it for the reasons you've mentioned.
reskined chrome are still ultimately taking google's changes downstream. For a while, it may be OK, but what happens when google changes the web standards to suit themselves? Will those reskinned browsers fork the standard?
Firefox _is competition_, but not competitive based on market share.
Maps is the last hold they have on me. I haven't yet bothered to find an alternative.
Google's customers are advertisers. They cater to that segment very well. They only need to attract users with "free" and cheap services so that advertisers think their campaigns are reaching enough eyeballs. Whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the end user has a good experience, is hardly relevant.
Are you joking? Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now. From batteries to cameras and screens, apple is way behind on hardware tech. Yeah they are better than Samsung - but Samsung has also massively fallen behind what's the state of the art.
>>is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year? And it will be even more now that Apple announced they are going to use Gemini as their AI base model.
You checked wrong. Google pays Apple on the order of $20 billion to be the default search on iOS - this is so significant it accounts for ~5% of Apple's annual revenue
This is true, but their phones don't ship with Google services out of box (at least the last time I checked). So in reality, "Google's Android" is really mostly Samsungs and Pixels.
In Poland you can buy Vivo phones with google services out of the box just fine.
I have an Oppo Find X9, purchased directly from them in the UK, and it came with all google services the same as my previous samsung.
> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.
What did the Bluetooth provide? I use third party EMR pens when at my desk, I've not noticed any missing features.
I’m firmly in the Apple ecosystem and every one of those examples were not Apple’s unilateral decision
I think seeing the noose circling around both Apple and Google’s necks better explains the quagmire that Google is in
Apple was getting ahead of a European consumer protection ruling to switch to a single interoperable cable, USBC was there
Apple and Google worked to make RCS better for years, as Apple was ignoring it and Google was using a non-standard RCS
Really? China? Where Google services are banned and Android phones come with local OS versions that cut them out? "High-friction sideloading" won't affect anyone in China. It won't be part of their experience at all.
If you can present a "locked down" phone to regulators, you might be more likely to get permission to sell large volumes of them - like iPhones in China.
This comment is insane in several different ways.
There's nothing preventing Google's phones from being distributed in China. They already are distributed in China.
Those phones won't come with the vendor OS installed; they'll come with an OS that works without a hitch in China.
One of the modifications to the local OS will be to make sideloading trivial, since that's how you're expected to install apps.
If you did start selling phones with a stock Android OS in China, those phones wouldn't work because their connections to Google services would all be blocked.† The reason for that block has nothing to do with sideloading or even with phones. It's going to stay in place.
† In my experience, it's still possible to receive pushes from Google while you're in China. For example, you can't connect to the Play Store, but if you visit the Play Store in a browser on a different device that can dodge the Great Firewall, and tell it that you want to install something to your phone, Google will reach out and make the install to your phone even if your phone isn't dodging the firewall.
While I can afford Apple, out of principle I am not buying anything above 300 euros, that requires me to also buy another computer for hobby coding, and a dev license.
All my use of Apple hardware is via projects where pool devices are assigned to the delivery team.
I tend to not use Apple not due to cost (I honestly believe it's OK to pay a premium for quality; I might disagree they offer it today though, as I do use a couple of their devices at work), but because of how closed their ecosystem is (and yes, all my personal devices are running some sort of Linux, and Android phones are rooted and with bootloader unlocked).
Not everyone has the US culture of running their life on credit.
Because when life changes, it isn't only their phone they lose.
The only single time I had a contract, because it was the only way to get a Nokia N70, I learnt never to do another one ever again.
I mostly buy my phones outright too, but I am under no impression that everybody else does it as well.
As a result, quite a lot of people use the "I can't believe they could make and sell an entire phone at this price" Xiaomi and similar phones.
In many places the default is prepaid SIMs with separately purchased phones. Sometimes the prepaying can be automated (e.g. in Russia), sometimes it involves you physically going to a shop once a month or so (e.g. in Egypt).
Faux luxury.
Totally works in the US too on teens, moms, and lower middle class people.
They'll make fun of the kid who has a Galaxy S24 while proudly showing off their aging iPhone 12...
Another reason it should have been broken apart years ago. It's laughable that the biggest ad company in the world owns the largest video site in the world, largest browser in the world, largest search engine in the world, and largest mobile OS in the world.
Google pays content creators so little they have all started including ads in their videos. Si technically as long as you are counted they get paid. Meanwhile, Google is more and more aggressive with their own ads interrupting videos and pushing you to subscribe to their expensive offer.
Some people, like me, have just stopped watching YouTube. Other are turning to blocking ads.
It's the usual tug of war between revenues and UX but I don't think consumers have to feel bad about not playing by Google's rules.
Just use viable FOSS alternatives like NewPipe or PipePipe. They are good and clean. They allow to watch or download YT content, without ads.
a) Don't throw malware in their ads.
b) Don't throw seizure-inducing flashes in their ads.
c) Allow turning off gambling in their ads.
People will use all sorts of excuses, like the ads are about gambling, or contain viruses, or are detrimental to mental health, or whatever. No, don't use these excuses. You just don't want ads, and it is still possible to not see them. That's respectable.
I switched over to NewPipe as it was better maintained and worked well.
Since past few months, NewPipe is not automatically showing latest YT videos, but it opens the video if I type in the video's source url. Downloads are working fine though, which is what I mainly use it for.
Will try Pipepipe again next weekend if it fares better.
Google is trying to suppress all these FOSS alternatives to its ads-overloaded apps.
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/website/issues/420#issuecomme...
The actual data could be hosted p2p across all the users devices, and any missing data retrieved one-time-only from real youtube servers.
BTW PeerTube is a thing.
The real challenge is delivering good enough performance that your site is better than waiting through 30 seconds of ads; and making it worth your time to run the site: there's hassle, legal risk, and it's not like you can run ads to make some cash.
Sounds like a Pied Piper app.
In Apple's case this has been the only Apple business to grow at all in several of the recent years. In fact there's quite a few Apple businesses that look like they are "revenue neutral", most famously iPads. Google is better, but not by much. Cloud is growing fast ("but why?" is a question that's unanswered. I mean, "because of AI", of course, but ... seriously?)
So not only are they enshittified, and you see them getting worse and worse over time, but the financial statements show: if you're expecting this to get any better either in the Apple or Google case, you're insane. Because clearly ads for scams are worth it for advertisers, and most other types of ads are not worth it. The situation evolves more and more towards the cable channel situation of 20 years back.
You could also reverse the view. The simple question: "are people willing to compromise on hardware quality to get less ads?" has a very clear NO answer. "Are governments/institutions that are totally dependent on these systems willing to pay to either improve phones or make an alternative available?", again has boatloads of evidence that the answer is NO, in all caps.
[1] Search for "credit card" or "lose weight" and judge for yourself. Top results are promoting Apple or Google themselves, everything else are ads, and very bad deals that trivially will neither accomplish the promised financial independence nor weight loss. Or should I put it like this: the credit card deals advertised are so bad they might achieve weight loss. By the way ads designed to mislead, which the top ads for either search obviously are, are what both Google and Apple promised time and again never to do.
If the rumors are true that the whole anti-sideloading thing is mostly because some governments complained, it might not have to do with a business strategy at all.
Google might also get paid to enable surveillance.
Well no, Chinese phones are above Apple material-wise (better battery, better cameras, better cooling) and on par SoC-wise since last year. That's what makes Google's strategy so baffling.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
It's entirely the same. I have gone back and forth regularly for the past 10 years. Android is completely on par app-wise. Apple has the iMessage lock-in in the US obviously but not in the rest of the world. Apple might have a slight advantage on the pro segment with the iPad but I don't think it has a huge impact on phones.
The really baffling thing to me is that while they lock down Android, they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
It's clear to me that they are two companies fighting each other inside Google: the ex-Motorola who wants to be Apple and the service side who wants to be Microsoft.
I personally fear that they are making the bed of the regulators who will probably come for Play Protect at some point to open the door for alternative OS providers at least in Europe. But maybe they think it's coming anyway and are strengthening their position and trying to milk what they can in the meantime.
Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have caught up on the phone SoC market.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has a slightly better CPU than the A19 Pro but a slightly worse GPU. Apple has a very slight advantage in watt usage but that's more than offset by the battery gap. Same thing with the Dimensity 9500.
The SoC market is now extremely competitive.
How is that a win?
Two, because the actual power consumption is not 65% higher - that's peak - and high end Chinese phones have batteries significantly bigger than the iPhone so you still get better screen time between charges in the end.
Regardless, I don’t understand how you can say that I’m moving goalposts when I mention performance per watt, which is absolutely relevant when talking about smartphone SoC performance, and then you bring up battery capacity, which is not.
They are on par because they now sometimes beat Apple top of the line A-chips on performance be it single core, multicores or GPU and do so within a power budget which allows the phone they ship in to be competitive screen-on time wise.
Apple doesn't have a one generation lead anymore which is a huge change compared to only three years ago.
You are moving the goalposts because the discussion was always about the gap between Apple and its competitors and you have entirely shifted to peak consumption when it was clear the conclusion would not be the one you want/expect.
If we were to look at more thorough reviews, e.g. Geekerwan, they always include TDP and power consumption, because that gives the necessary context to understand the results.
And obviously I’m not denying that Mediatek and Qualcomm have massively improved their designs, but they aren’t on par when we account all the things that matter.
Your argument is that, since manufacturers are putting larger batteries in phones, SoC power consumption shouldn’t matter. That is moving the goalpost, because you introduce a variable that should be irrelevant to SoC performance testing to dismiss my observation.
Hardly, you are intentionally looking at peak consumption because it suits the answer you want after being proved wrong. This is nicely highlighted by how you want to casually dismiss benchmarks which don't support your point.
> Your argument is that, since manufacturers are putting larger batteries in phones, SoC power consumption shouldn’t matter. That is moving the goalpost, because you introduce a variable that should be irrelevant to SoC performance testing to dismiss my observation.
No, that is looking at the actual experience of using the phone. Peak consumption is a useless metric. Nobody cares. People care about their phone feeling smooth and how often they have to charge. From this point of view, Apple has no lead whatsoever provided by their SoC while they used to which is the point I have been making from the start.
> The whole claim that Qualcomm is on par with Apple predicates upon results from benchmarking tools, which stress CPU and GPU and thus induce peak power consumption.
If you are saying that Qualcomm and Mediatek are on par with Apple because they perform the same in Geekbench, then we have to talk about peak power consumption and TDP. But regardless, even if we were to look at average power consumption over time, Elite Gen 5 still tops the A19 Pro by more than *20%*.
> No, that is looking at the actual experience of using the phone. Peak consumption is a useless metric. Nobody cares. People care about their phone feeling smooth and how often they have to charge. From this point of view, Apple has no lead whatsoever provided by their SoC while they used to which is the point I have been making from the start.
Speaking of moving goalposts...
This whole paragraph makes no sense. First you said that Qualcomm is on par with Apple based off benchmarks. Now, if peak consumption doesn't matter, therefore benchmarks don't either, so we have to compare the "experience" of using a phone? How do you quantify that? Which phone would you compare an iPhone with? Does every single phone with an Elite Gen 5 perform exactly the same? Do we choose the Poco F8 Ultra, which seems to throttle and stutter quite frequently, or the OnePlus 15, which reaches external temperatures of 50C?
Anyway, pick a lane, or at least make a good point, because this ain't one.
Unrelated, but this whole thing reminds me of how, back in the day, some manufacturers would put a desktop CPU and GPU inside a laptop as thick as a brick, fed the 10Kg monstrosity with a 400W power adapter, and call it "the fastest laptop ever", which could be technically true, but was very, very wrong.
What Google loses by pushing iOS AI customers to ChatGPT outweighs what they gain by trying to convince people to switch phones for access to Gemini.
So unless you want to spend the time and effort to switch to and work with the quirks of LineageOS or similar, you get an overall worse experience.
Much better camera sensors, much better silicon carbon batteries etc in Oppo, Vivo, Honor and Xiaomi devices than anything Apple produces. Form factors Apple still hasn't figured out, such as 7th gen Foldables, Flip foldable phones etc, Camera zoom lenses that can be attached...
One area Android has a clear advantage is Android TV devices verified by Google, because there is a much wider array of streaming apps of all kinds available. However google doesn’t seem to focus on this very much, and if you look for forum recommendations for google android streaming devices it’s very often the NVIDIA shield pro from 2019. Hopefully that device will I’ll be supported for a few more years because there seems to not be good easily available alternatives.
Apple implemented USB-C at a steady pace across their entire product lineup, as is demonstrated by the timeline below:
2015: 12in MacBook with USB-C released
2016: MacBook pro switches to USB-C
2018: iPad Pro switches to USB-C
2020: iPad Air switches to USB-C
2021: iPad Mini switches to USB-C
2022: iPad switches to USB-C
2023: iPhone switches to USB-C
It feels really silly to be spending time defending Apple over this, but the EU certainly does not deserve credit for iPhones having USB-C. I'm sure there are politicians who'd love for you to believe that, but it's simply dishonest propaganda.
> And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android
personally, it makes me less enthusiastic about android as i don't need another iphone but n=1, so maybe it will work out for them....
If you are hired by a manufacturer of say cola, you cannot drink the competition cola.
Those in google laugh when asked to show their phones - and then show iphones. In any other business they would be terminated.
I don't know if that's true, but the times I've visited silicon valley I didnt see many android phones.
Check the "socially inept tech roast show" - where people from those teams demonstrate their ignorance and hatered towards own products and users.
Since they dont use them, they dont see nor care about bugs.
Meanwhile if you work for a cola company and they catch you drinking competing product you will get fired (your contract bans you fron that). Same for many other products.
I understand using an Apple phone to learn what it does / its featurs, but those Android employees dont use Android at all. And it shows
Here is how a job works: worker works, company gives money. Workers do whatever the fuck they want with the money they earn.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years
Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile). Apple has had better software support & integration for their hardware that has lead to e.g. strong camera quality advantages (iOS camera app has been able to use the hardware better to produce photos people want despite some Android OEMs having objectively better camera modules since those OEMs have to work through a lot of Google contracts & software extraction).
The hardware has never been better - their holistic ecosystem has just made integrations with it smoother.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people)
This has been true but it's always been marginal, & the "for most people" qualifier has contracted significantly in recent years. Both Google's & Apple's 1P offerings have declined in quality & popularity, but Google have increased lock-in & reliance on theirs in ways Apple can't, while the 3P offerings on Android have improved significantly relative to iOS. Gone are the days of companies releasing exclusively on iOS, or the Android version being an afterthought with missing features - if anything it's swung in the other direction.
To be clear, I think your points still stand: Google's recent strategy doesn't make sense for Google. I just don't think it's as glaringly clear cut as you make out.
One aspect that's worth keeping in mind is the non-US market. Apple has a 58% market share in the US but it's 28% worldwide. Outside of the US market the impact of that "every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share" is significantly diluted (tbh I'm not sure it's even increasing outside of the US at all) & emerging markets are growth areas.
This is just straight up false. Qualcomm's current top of the line processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind that.
iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires. Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software). It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.
This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent. They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
I can't say I noticed a difference in quality when switching. Maybe some people can, but for me it was just a different, but still well-made phone.
> Apple has higher consumer trust.
I can't speak for consumers in general, but this is certainly no longer the case for me.
I also used MacOS for 20 years, and switched to Linux about a year ago because I didn't like the direction Apple was headed. It may be my choice of reading material (HN), but I receive almost daily confirmation that this was a sound decision.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Not selection, necessarily, but certainly quality.
As a side note, my iPad (my sole remaining Apple device) quietly updated to iOS 26 a few days ago. Despite having spent months reading about how bad it is, I was still genuinely shocked.
Again, I can't speak for "consumers", but for me Apple now has a far worse user experience.
The consensus online appears to be “oh, yeah, that’s the OIS module, you have to expect it, they all do that”. Well, iPhones also have OIS and they don’t do this.
Android might be “good enough” in hardware now but it’s definitely still behind.
Sure, a small proportion might move to Linux Mobile.
Most of the rest of the population will just stick to Google, because they don’t have a choice.
In many countries, your government or some other essential service demands that you have either an Apple or Google device.
What? Are you referring to the 36% of ad revenue Google pays to Apple? I don't think Google is too concerned about that.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...
Long time Pixel user here who has always believed the story that Apple has the closed, but refined, higher quality experience and Google has the slightly freer, but coarser UX.
I was convinced to make the switch this year and the Apple iPhone 17 Pro + whatever iOS version is, by far the worst phone I’ve ever owned.
Photos are worse, low light is worse, macros are worse, the UI is laggy, buggy and crashes.
The keyboard and autosuggest is shockingly bad.
Incredibly popular apps on iOS (YT, X, etc) are just as bad and often worse.
iMessage is a psyop. The absolute worst messaging app in history with zero desktop access for non-Mac users?!
If you’re on Android, and especially pixel, please know that Apple has completely given up and no longer executes at the level you remember from 10-15 years ago.
You mean Apple has been forced by regulators to implement core features like USB-C and RCS?
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Whether they did it out of the goodness of their heart or because a regulator forced them, it’s still got usb-c
When they introduced Lightning in 2012, they made a commitment to all of the third-party hardware developers that iPhones would support it for a decade. I’m sure the EU pressure helped but USB-C iPhones shipping in 2023 is right on that original timing.
Truth is, apple fought EU hard, we saw it from inside quite well. Backstabs, some cheap tricks trying to delay and evade this, even when it was clear how things will be. Not their best days to be polite.
Why giving some heartless mega corporation free moral credits if they are not well deserved?
Oh right, because they collected license fees and royalties for Lightning, reportedly $4 per cable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209924
No Aux port, no usb. Slow phone with slow animations. But maybe this is fixed, its been 10 years.
>Apple has higher consumer trust.
lmao, this is just a user error problem. None have trust. If they trust, yikes. Thats a negative that Apple can brainwash people.
>Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Solid no here. Being able to install stuff from fdroid is amazing.
>Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices
As long as you are okay with waiting 4 years. Sure.
You forgot to mention how poor iPhone security is. People have died due to Apple's poor security.
Not surprised the same kind of person that buys an iphone also fell for samsung.
Losing the ability to easily sideload apps is what we're talking about.
How do iPhones have worse security than Android???
It has been 10 years and none of this is true today, also the average person doesn’t care about an aux port.
> Solid no here. Being able to install stuff from fdroid is amazing.
Not sure if you’re serious here, the app selection is far better on the App Store (and also Google Play Store) due to the nature of not being restricted to purely FOSS apps.
> You forgot to mention how poor iPhone security is.
Citation needed, iOS has the second best mobile security and is at worst equivalent to stock Android. The only OS that surpasses iOS by a large amount is GrapheneOS.
> People have died due to Apple's poor security.
This could also be said for any other OS/maker? Nothing is 100% secure/private.
Oof, Apple adopting core 'Android' features... Yea, finally? Increasing iOS market share? Where? Not most places
I think it's weird you come at this from an antitrust angle when I would totally make the argument the other way.
If there's pressure to remove this feature, then it's from companies that make apps that anyone can pull up in Revanced and they can patch it and can be running a version of a piece of software that shouldn't exist with "premium" features enabled. I don't think there's an argument against it really besides that. At least not an honest, intelligent argument....
Ultimately, I doubt many would jump to Apple. Inertia would insist: People just won't upgrade. Which is already occurring, people are keeping their devices longer, especially Apple users. And they wonder why their battery stops working... Oy vey!
At least on my end the political knee bending by Tim Cook and their recent iOS and MacOS updates have me firmly on the side of not giving any more money to Apple. (Sadly, I still pay for Apple One for hy family, so I'm not perfect. But... hey, it's a start. Speak with your wallets).
And I will be considering alternatives when my machines which I will be running to their end stop working.
It's really such a shame cause I really liked their privacy stances, accessibility work, and focus on user experience.
Now I say, screw Apple, and encourage people to boycott and be wary of upgrades.
It's obvious you've never used Android if you think these are core features LMAO. No one cares that much about connector type, more the fact it's using an industry standard versus proprietary. No one cares about RCS, everyone uses WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Line, etc...
Core features are stuff like being able to search for a business through the phone app, Maps telling you where you parked your car, unprompted, compatibility with the casting protocol, the ability to make ANY app the default for a particular task, the ability to sideload, the fact you can switch phone brands and get whatever hardware you want but your core OS with all your accounts stays the same. Basically the ability to do what you want win your OS and no one restricting your phone's features.
As for Google's strategy, it's the same as Valve's. Having a platform they can't be locked out of since both MS and Apple have shown they'll abuse their market power.
Maybe by now there is some Android emulation for iOS that can do it?
So, Android may actually benefit from a lack of differentiation: like iOS, for a third of the price seems like a good value proposition.
If you want to go cheap, the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G, a perfectly fine, recent phone is $200, which is still a 1:3 price ratio to the $600 iPhone.
And you can go even cheaper than that, as in $150, new, though at that point, we are entering a territory where many people will feel the limitations.
Sigh. When will HN learn that the vast majority of customers dont see those as differentiating features.
One of the key things separating humans from other animals is being able to put yourself in another’s shoes.
That is quickly eroding and has never been justified other than by marketing.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Android has always had a much better selection of open source software, which, at least to me, is the thing that matters most.
Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access).
This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers.
The heavy US skew of HN really distorts the arguments here, as Android-based scams aren't as common in AMerica due to the prevalence of iOS in that region.
Making sideloading harder has only one goal - growing the wall around the garden a bit higher, piece by piece, layer by layer, while everything within slowly grows more toxic.
In fact I don’t know anyone among any of my friends or family that have ever had that issue.
Every last one of my non-technical friends and family have been hit by spyware on their windows devices.
To say I’m extremely skeptical that this has anything to do with protecting users is an understatement.
In fact I’m willing to go out on a limb and say it’s a nearly non-existent issue outside of people being targeted by nation states.
Would love to see some numbers backing up the claim that sideloading is resulting in mass exploiting of Android devices because I can’t find them.
1. Live in a country where Android is much more popular than iOS?
2. Live in an environment where piracy is rampant?
3. Are used to sideloading apps to get free movies / soccer?
To resolve the problem, scammers would deceive the victims into downloading a malicious app, in an Android Package Kit (APK) file format, sent through WhatsApp.
If there's a reputation, that means it's reasonably widespread. 5% doesn't seem like much.
Does this mean there are so many advanced users sideloading apps to compromise them?
Except users aren't so advanced that they are getting scammed because of side loading?
Or might it be the cascading delays in security updates that don't seem to reach devices between Google, manufacturers, and telcos? This is a much more massive (the 95%) of security hole and backdoors for scams to enter.
These arguments don't really seem to fit together or make sense.
Happy to get some links to read more about all of the statements.
Google could let users add their own signing keys (like browsers allow), and it might be they will let students or power users do this, or they could do what F-Droid does in packaging FOSS apps without developers having to provide extra PII information. If they do neither of these things, it de facto means they're only after control at the expense of normal users.
Both phone users have no idea how to sideload, everything was installed from the Play store.
Personally, I would rather see Android only run signed and sanctioned apps to prevent the technologically illiterate from getting pwned. If you want to be able to side load then sign up to be a developer and go to town on your device.
Also USB-C ain't some differentiating feature of android, rather rest of the world and electronics. Fully apple's fault here, it could have been their standard as the one, but greed is greed.
Screens were always better on Samsungs flagships (apple buys screens there too) - mildly higher resolution, refresh rate and contrasts but these are rather unimportant. As an non-apple tech user, apple phone hardware has very few things that interest me or put them above the others.
Its better integration with software that did put them above, since it was optimized for a very narrow band of hardware so could get far even with subpar hardware (till M chips came but these days they are almost on par with Snapdragons). But that software has a list of issues much bigger than hardware above so no, thank you.
How does one know there is a long-term strategy
History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1
1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation
One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomenon but HN replies may choose to focus only on this one example and not on the overall "tech" company phenomenon of reactionism as exhibited through endless copying
It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead.
EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various features before iOS, etc. I mean they were creating from a UI/UX standpoint a copy of the BlackBerry when Google bought them, and then when the iPhone came out they completely changed the UI/UX paradigm to match.
The actual truth seems to be that "Android's introduction of touchscreens was a reaction to iOS", which is WAY different than saying that the entire operating system was spun up just to compete with iOS.
and it definitely was, to mitigate the risk of losing sight of the web users behaviour
That said, Android options are dwindling which is not a good thing. Remember LG? They are gone.
Or you could analyze this at the actual face value: the damage to Google’s brand caused by malware campaigns, especially faux-banking apps robbing people in some regions, is greater than the damage from making sideloading harder for some edge case users.
Not everything is a giant conspiracy; this move has always looked pretty clear cut to me from Google’s standpoint and I’ve never really seen any evidence to the contrary.
The alternative here is not Firefox gaining more market share, it’s further encroachment of Chrome and derivatives. You’re not getting this big win for browser diversity. I’m not sure what you really gain here as Safari works fine for near most everything most people do.
Also I don’t think PWA’s have proliferated on desktop or Android despite Google’s efforts in raising awareness for them. It seems to me like consumers largely aren’t into web app shells. They either visit a web app in their browsers or use the App Store apps, by a large margin
Realistically a 200 euros Xiaomi phone, to most users, is as good as they need it for seeing videos online and chatting.
If you want to spend more, at each price tier you have plenty of choice including: better hardware, better cameras, more memory, etc.
E.g. I do need dual (physical) sim phones. So I ain't buying iPhones ever for this very need.
Consumer trust is very debatable: I have been locked out of my apple id for 2 months in 2021, and that was a work machine I was locked out from. Tragic. Apparently it's not my hardware if Apple decides it's not.
Nowadays I only own an M3 Max because my employer gave it to me. But I don't even use it unless on the move, as I have a way more powerful desktop computer.
https://www.metrobyt-mobile.com/cell-phone/apple-iphone-13?i...
That's a prepaid cell phone company (no contracts); not sure how many months (if any) you have to pay for to unlock the phone. Renewed and unlocked ones are about $270 on amazon.
The current iOS supports things back to iPhone 11 and the SE2, so you can expect the SE3 and iPhone 13 to get at least two more years of support (no real guarantees, but they're still selling new stock of both, and they have a reputation to protect).
If Google is narrowing their moat on this, there are a lot fewer reasons for me, personally, to stay on the platform.
If I assume "it" means "programming on a mobile device": yes, it is. Apple cares an awful lot about the developer experience, has massive support, and a deep well of shareable knowledge. Google is about the same (the developer experience is a little patchier; I'd generously call Google's approach to devex on Android "bag-of-cats vision" and since one is not developing on, generally, a vertically-integrated tech stack, one has to struggle a bit more to get the tools set up and maintained).
The big selling point for Android is freedom of that stack, and if they throw sand in those gears, the benefits of the vertically-integrated stack that you have to pay-to-play start to become actually enticing.
Better on what? Versus what?
> Apple has higher consumer trust.
Not from me and my peers. All nerds/devs/sysadmins.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Again, based on what?
> Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.
Only when forced.
> Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access. What are you even talking about?
Don't get me wrong, iPhones are great devices, but I prefer the Android ecosystem time and time again.
What they can do, is make themselves politically useful to whoever will be in charge. Right now the war on general purpose computing is in high gear, due to panic over AI models, social media manipulation and (as always) kids. That's the only ticket to avoid an antitrust crackdown.
And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android that also help them mitigate the threat of antitrust? Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.