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It's clear from reading the threads in here that user experience on either side is not consistent. That's fine, get what works for you. If you have an android a

• lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Sample size of this thread is too small. Based on the fact that almost all the profits in the phone market go to Apple, obviously they are providing something people want that others can't. In other words, Apple consistently provides a user experience that more people prefer compared to Androids.
  • majani 8y ago
    Not really. The luxury market is less about fulfilling basic needs and more about telling a good story and differentiating the owners of luxury from normal people
    • lotsofpulp 8y ago
      The iPhone is not that expensive so as to confer luxury status, at least not for the upper quintiles. If it was, then you wouldn't see it used so normally, that would defeat the goal of exclusivity. The difference is people with disposable income are choosing to go with Apple, hence they have a better user experience comparable to other high end phones on the market, with the main differentiating factor being one is iOS and one is Android.
  • mediocrejoker 8y ago
    Profits go to Apple but I think unit sales sway heavily towards Android, don't they? Apple has much higher margins, so maybe you could say that people who prefer Apple prefer it more heavily than those who slightly prefer Android. My preference is Apple currently but I think Android is probably better value for the money in most cases.
    • lotsofpulp 8y ago
      A few hundred extra dollars for something you use many hours per day for multiple critical tasks is hard for me to nitpick about, so I think whatever people like to use (evidenced by what they are buying) shows what provides them the most value. Unit sales don't say anything in my opinion, other than people who can't afford seem to be going with Android. If you want to make a statement about which user experience is preferable for most people, then the high end phones, which are the phones being chosen out of preference, is the data you want.
    • bena 8y ago
      Yeah, Apple is either number one or two in terms of phones sold compared to other manufacturers. But Android has a commanding lead of Smartphone OS installation. Because you not only have the Samsung Galaxy phones of the world, but also the BLU Studio X8.
  • Taniwha 8y ago
    I think you're being terribly US-centric here - iphone use there is far higher than the rest of the world I also think the locked-in thing is strong - people use iphones/android because they've always used iphones/android not many people have done the switch and comparison to actually have the experience this person has had
• Analemma_ 8y ago
  > What I don't get it... is this fanboyism, this loyalty to a company that knows you as close as a number on a spreadsheet and a dollar amount on their bank account. I don't approve of platform fanboyism myself, but there is more to it than this. Loyalty to a platform often comes from approving of that company's particular business model and wanting to see it succeed over the others for moral reasons. iOS fans like Apple's philosophy of "you're the customer, not the product" and deliberately not hoovering up data; Android fans like being able to load any application and change almost any setting on a device they own without a gatekeeper saying they can't. These aren't irrational things to be in favor of.
  • ItsMe000001 8y ago
    While that may be true for some, I think you overestimate the amount of conscious thought that goes into human behavior. Even when people have explanations for why they do something, if it's not something truly technical that only abstract conscious thought processes can produce, and if there is any emotional component, those explanations have been shown to come after the decision. The brain creates explanations for whatever it already did, and those explanations are not connected to the actual reasoning. The reason for that is the brain is itself unaware of how it arrived at the result of automatic decisions. It would have to have an additional layer monitoring its connections that would have to be larger than those connections (axons and their neurons). Monitoring is costly. Much easier to create an explanation out of thin air, using your assumptions about yourself... Consciousness is a layer on top, there is no direct control of the brain's processes. You are as surprised by your own decisions as much as the person next to you :-) (unless it's something mundane with no surprise factor for anyone)
  • bena 8y ago
    I think Android fans like the idea of total control more than the actual application of it. Most of what I've seen are people who just change the system font. I know there are some people out there who are doing really cool things, but they are in the minority. The majority of the fanboys are people who parrot the line but instead don't do anything "the other side" doesn't do. I'm familiar with my ecosystem of choice, I prefer its conventions, but if you like the other, it's cool. Of course, I'm a software developer, so I have all the control I want. I also have devices from both ecosystems, so there's that as well.
• craftyguy 8y ago
  I can't wait for the Librem5 phone. Both mainstream options, whether it's Apple or Android, are terrible.
  • banku_brougham 8y ago
    This idea as presented would be perfect for me. But will they really implement a strong security model? Only time and a lot of third party review, and users, will tell.
  • ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    I always wonder about people who value security so highly. I like the idea of security but I can't justify the cost of more than $2,000 to protect myself from ad trackers. Like is this something that matters that much because of the line of work you do? Or is it just about being a high net worth individual.
    • ScottBurson 8y ago
      $2000?? I'm looking at the page right now [0] and it says $600 — well within reason. [0] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
    • craftyguy 8y ago
      > I always wonder about people who value security so highly. Well, generally those types of folks do not own smartphones. > cost of more than $2,000 You must be thinking of a different device?
  • meitham 8y ago
    I was one that of the first to jump on the FirefoxOS and really believed it will be a viable option. I can’t describe the disappointment when the project was killed off. I doubt there will be any alternative to android or iOS for a while. However I think once phones are powerful enough people will just run standard GNU/Linux on it, at the stage there won’t be much of distinction between a general purpose computer and a phone.
• snowwrestler 8y ago
  You should definitely buy an iPhone, and if you're wondering why I feel so strongly about it, the answer is that I have a lot of money in AAPL. (Companies are not the only ones with spreadsheets...) ;-)
  • Bucephalus355 8y ago
    Lol almost made me spit out my morning coffee with your response. Great job :)
• mattnewton 8y ago
  I think with Apple at least, it’s a sense of trusting the platform to make all the right decisions for you; it’s what you pay for in part. That also leads to the interesting problem of users feeling betrayed instead of just annoyed when something isn’t right. I ran a user feedback tool for help documentation when I was at apple, but people would just post whatever there greivences were about the product and not the documentation. It was very different user relationship than I had experienced before - there was immense trust, and lifestyle invested in the brand, and immense pressure as an engineer to live up to all these people’s expectations. On the ground floor, we weren’t worried about missing earnings or slowing user growth, we were worried that “Bob” who runs his media company on a Mac will be frustrated by a change in numbers or iCloud, or that the new iPhone wouldn’t make people feel like they had the best technology in the world.
  • mistermann 8y ago
    > there was immense trust, and lifestyle invested in the brand, and immense pressure as an engineer to live up to all these people’s expectations. Agreed, and this emotional involvement goes a long way to explaining Apple's legendary margins and ability to sell upgrades with increasingly unexciting advancements. > On the ground floor, we weren’t worried about missing earnings or slowing user growth, we were worried that “Bob” who runs his media company on a Mac will be frustrated by a change in numbers or iCloud, or that the new iPhone wouldn’t make people feel like they had the best technology in the world. This seems much less true to me. There are many, many examples of poor design choices or imperfect implementations. A recent pet peeve of mine is that I simply cannot decipher how the Facetime contacts and call initiation design works. Somehow I got it working and now can pick a name from the recent calls list, but how I managed to get it to that state is utterly beyond me. This is an absolutely fundamental capability, and yet completely not clear. This could be said about so many different aspects of Apple products that I find it hard to believe that concern for user happiness and understanding is really that big of an explicit concern. Rather, I suspect any concern is tangential to something else.
    • dogweather 8y ago
      > There are many, many examples of poor design choices or imperfect implementations. I'm thinking this isn't a contradiction: that the designers are striving for user-centered design. But many Apple apps aren't allocated a dedicated team. New apps are given birth but then not recognized as a new "thing" that will require continuous maintenance and care. And then I also imagine that many UX decisions are made by just one or two people, and fairly quickly. They're not taking the time to think about the app, and whether the interaction makes sense to someone not intimately involved. At least - these are my guesses as someone not inside Apple.
• gervase 8y ago
  This isn't unique to technology, but can easily be seen in politics, sports, religion, etc. It's just not labelled fanboyism in other domains. My background is not in psychology, but I suspect is boils down to something like "I've made my decision, don't wish to admit I am wrong, and will therefore vociferously defend my position against all comers, as well as attack those who disagree with me."
  • Damogran6 8y ago
    The problem comes when there's really only two choices. 1. I have an iPhone because it consistently received phonecalls when my 6N and Google Fi did not. 2. I had issues with SMS going where the fuck ever in Android that isn't an issue in iPhone. 3. iMessage's walled garden is slightly preferential because it's where the bulk of my contacts are. Therefore I'm an Apple fanboy and apologist. I guess. There's a similar rabid population with gaming (consoles vs. PCMR) that goes away when you have enough funding to just buy both. A lot of rabid fanboyism exists where funds are sparse.
  • mistermann 8y ago
    > My background is not in psychology, but I suspect is boils down to something like.... The acknowledgement and discussion of this phenomenon is also one of the biggest reasons underlying the surging popularity of Jordan Peterson (Jonathan Haidt, etc). Human psychology is such that people like to self-segregate into teams, despite what they may say when they are being surveyed on the matter.