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I am glad to see that after my brief foray into Android years ago, switching away from that ecosystem was the right choice. I bought the original dual core Moto

I am glad to see that after my brief foray into Android years ago, switching away from that ecosystem was the right choice. I bought the original dual core Motorola Android phone. Remember the one that you could plug into a laptop type dock to make it work like a cheap laptop? The one that had the fingerprint scanner as its killer feature? Yeah I went through six of them because the fingerprint scanner and the touchscreen had some kind of crosstalk that touching the scanner even accidentally meant it fired screen multi touch events. Also, Motorola stopped supporting that device in like a year, explicitly saying they will never update it to a newer version of Android AND you couldn't unlock the bootloader. And it was dog slow for any newer apps because of course it was running a stupidly old OS. I know Android got better since, but between Samsung cramming more bloat into their devices and making that standard and Google dropping support for their devices like they have been, I don't miss any of that.

RIMR 6y ago
If Android wins we have tons of companies working together to bring us the best experience. If iOS wins, we have a single corporation in charge of our mobile device experience. If I had to choose the philosophical winner of this competition, it's pretty objectively Android for not existing to create a monopoly over the entire industry, even if Google makes questionable decisions regarding their specific hardware releases.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  The problem is that we haven’t seen healthy competition in the Android market. What I mean by that is this: Android isn’t really open source the way we normally understand that. Google makes some changes, then tosses the source code over the fence to everyone else. So hardware manufacturers like Samsung can use it as is, or they can tack on their own crap since adding software features is way easier than hardware ones. So you get an OS with another OS shell built over it all in the name of marketing. You also get Amazon’s devices which are incompatible in a lot of ways even though they are also Android. What would be ideal is more of what we have with Linux distorts: an extremely solid base and distributions that can run on any modern phone. Why can’t I run the Samsung OS on my HTC phone and vice verse? Why are bootloaders always locked? Why are updates only handed down when the company execs deem it to be necessary? I agree that the Apple system is problematic. But their UX is superior in so many ways. I hate how iMessage is Apple-only but I love using it vs traditional SMS. I hate the lock in, but I have been paying for iCloud storage to handle all my photos and backups and such for years and have had zero problems from it. I like choice, but I really hate when the device I use almost more than all others combined on a daily basis doesn’t work because some marketing stuff prevented it from getting an update. Like it or not, Apple does UX better, and as long as they do they’ll keep getting my money.

RIMR 6y ago

If Android wins we have tons of companies working together to bring us the best experience. If iOS wins, we have a single corporation in charge of our mobile device experience. If I had to choose the philosophical winner of this competition, it's pretty objectively Android for not existing to create a monopoly over the entire industry, even if Google makes questionable decisions regarding their specific hardware releases.

IgorPartola 6y ago
The problem is that we haven’t seen healthy competition in the Android market. What I mean by that is this: Android isn’t really open source the way we normally understand that. Google makes some changes, then tosses the source code over the fence to everyone else. So hardware manufacturers like Samsung can use it as is, or they can tack on their own crap since adding software features is way easier than hardware ones. So you get an OS with another OS shell built over it all in the name of marketing. You also get Amazon’s devices which are incompatible in a lot of ways even though they are also Android. What would be ideal is more of what we have with Linux distorts: an extremely solid base and distributions that can run on any modern phone. Why can’t I run the Samsung OS on my HTC phone and vice verse? Why are bootloaders always locked? Why are updates only handed down when the company execs deem it to be necessary? I agree that the Apple system is problematic. But their UX is superior in so many ways. I hate how iMessage is Apple-only but I love using it vs traditional SMS. I hate the lock in, but I have been paying for iCloud storage to handle all my photos and backups and such for years and have had zero problems from it. I like choice, but I really hate when the device I use almost more than all others combined on a daily basis doesn’t work because some marketing stuff prevented it from getting an update. Like it or not, Apple does UX better, and as long as they do they’ll keep getting my money.