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"I know that the devices are pretty and feel nice and maybe your friends all have one and you want to signal that you’re one of the crowd, but it’s not worth it

by jhloa2 6y ago

"I know that the devices are pretty and feel nice and maybe your friends all have one and you want to signal that you’re one of the crowd, but it’s not worth it." That's quite an over simplification of the appeal of an iPhone and comes off as him whining about whiners. I'd like to switch back to a flip phone from a privacy perspective, but there's a few conveniences that would be hard to go without. I refuse to buy any more Android phones as I've only had issue after issue with software and hardware, and Apple seems like the lesser of two evils. It feels like we're stuck in an American political party system where our only reasonable options are to choose between two companies that only have their own best interests in mind.

denni9th 6y ago
The issue is app stores. Most app developers/companies won't deploy to any stores other than Google's and Apple's, so when it comes to choosing a device that can run most apps its IPhone or Android. A solution here is to introduce a standard mobile app format, with standard APIs to interact with the OS. Then app developers write one app that can run on any supported device. But good luck getting the duopoly to agree to that.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > A solution here is to introduce a standard mobile app format, with standard APIs to interact with the OS. I would argue that's exactly what Android is. It's a mobile OS with a mobile app ecosystem of APIs. But the fact that no government forced all smartphones to use it means it didn't and likely won't happen. Also, governments don't seem to move at the speed of iOS/Android features, so taking that hypothetical path would have likely meant all mobile phone features slowed a lot. > The issue is app stores. Another solution is for governments to enforce reasonable access to all mobile app companies and to make sure the purchases and data are portable to all similar devices (say all smartphones or all game consoles). It's not that hard to make the coupling of the app binary to the device tight but the license to use the software portable.

by jhloa2 6y ago

denni9th 6y ago

The issue is app stores. Most app developers/companies won't deploy to any stores other than Google's and Apple's, so when it comes to choosing a device that can run most apps its IPhone or Android. A solution here is to introduce a standard mobile app format, with standard APIs to interact with the OS. Then app developers write one app that can run on any supported device. But good luck getting the duopoly to agree to that.

thephyber 6y ago
> A solution here is to introduce a standard mobile app format, with standard APIs to interact with the OS. I would argue that's exactly what Android is. It's a mobile OS with a mobile app ecosystem of APIs. But the fact that no government forced all smartphones to use it means it didn't and likely won't happen. Also, governments don't seem to move at the speed of iOS/Android features, so taking that hypothetical path would have likely meant all mobile phone features slowed a lot. > The issue is app stores. Another solution is for governments to enforce reasonable access to all mobile app companies and to make sure the purchases and data are portable to all similar devices (say all smartphones or all game consoles). It's not that hard to make the coupling of the app binary to the device tight but the license to use the software portable.