5 ms·

I switched to iOS recently. It is worse in every conceivable way. It's much buggier, harder to use (lots of hidden UI and surprising inconsistencies), and less

• lgas 3y ago
  What do you get out of iMessage and its network effect besides blue text instead of green?
  • DrBenCarson 3y ago
    In the US? Friends. You will literally lose out on social activities bc of SMS.
    • lgas 3y ago
      I'm in the US and have an iPhone but as I mentioned in another reply, I have friends with android and have never noticed any impediments to texting them... or them me? Is this a high school thing or are you talking about adults?
      • DrBenCarson 3y ago
        Adults will comb group texts for the number preventing them from sending a photo at usable resolution and delete them.
        • DANmode 3y ago
          Adults also send emails to 45 clear-text To: addresses, or Reply All thousands of people. Is this a good heuristic for acceptable behavior?
          • DrBenCarson 3y ago
            I’m not making a judgement, just an observation. Ultimately in this case they’re moving from cleartext to an E2EE platform (iMessage) so maybe you’d be happier in this case?
      • MAGZine 3y ago
        I, as an adult, have been left out of many many group texts (and thus social activities) because they didn't want to make the convo green. Queue the onslaught of empathetic "get better friends lol" -- except I've seen this behaviour across so many social circles that even if it was a viable suggestion, there's no certainty the next group would be any better.
        • DANmode 3y ago
          I feel like I would move if I couldn't find any social circle aside from rabid blue-bubblers.
          • DrBenCarson 3y ago
            You would emigrate from the US?
            • DANmode 3y ago
              You incorrectly believe your experience is representative of all of the vastly differing experiences of those in the US. The phenomenon you're commenting on/describing happens often, perhaps is even common. But it is not ubiquitous.
      • devnulll 3y ago
        There are any number family group chats that leave my sister out of things. She's the only Android user out of about 20 people. If she's on the threads then pictures, videos, and reactions are all broken. This is 100% deliberate by Apple, but the bias against Android users is real.
        • DANmode 3y ago
          > but the bias against Android users is real. From people who don't know it's an intentional limitation by Apple. aka, mostly nontechnical people.
        • Mumps 3y ago
          Genuinely asking: your family is not willing to use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Teams, Discord, ..., to have your sister be included?
          • DANmode 3y ago
            "Why should they have to install an extra app just because she wants to be different?" Experiencing this sort of behavior keeps me from believing I am an understanding person.
    • George83728 3y ago
      I think I'm better off without such vapid people as friends. None of my friends with iphones have ever complained about me having an android, nor can I even imagine them doing something like that. Bullying somebody for their consumer choices is far beyond the pale. You may as well say that not owning a BMW will lose you potential friends because some BMW drivers will sneer at you. Maybe that's true, but who's loss is that really?
      • DrBenCarson 3y ago
        It’s not explicit. It’s the added friction that places you a bit outside the “inner circle.” Can’t FaceTime? Oh I’ll call you later. Can’t watch the video I sent to the group? I’ll show you later. Little things add up. Now you’re missing inside jokes, impromptu plans, etc.
        • lapetitejort 3y ago
          I took a picture of a car driving away from a hit and run. The victim asked for the picture, but because I couldn't airdrop it, he'd rather just write down the license plate. I offered to text or email but he refused. A small amount of friction caused him to miss out on potential evidence.
          • George83728 3y ago
            > I offered to text or email So because you weren't an asshole, you were willing to adapt to his use of android. Doesn't that illustrate my point? People who aren't assholes are willing to be flexible. If you had insisted on airdrop or nothing, that would be different. > but he refused It sounds like he didn't think the picture was important and only wanted the license plate number. This isn't an android/iphone matter at all.
            • lapetitejort 3y ago
              My inadvertent lack of detail leads to an interesting misunderstanding. I am the android user. So in the iPhone user's case, it was airdrop or nothing. The picture was important enough to ask for but not important enough to spend an extra thirty seconds dictating a email address. The picture has more detail than just the license plate. It also had the car make, model, condition, road, position, and metadata. However, I'm not sure the legality (chain of custody, etc) of someone's hastily shot picture of a car driving when dealing with a hit-and-run. Better to have and not need though.
  • nickthegreek 3y ago
    happy acquaintances that are more likely to include you in social activities.
    • lgas 3y ago
      Really? I have an iphone but I have friends with android and have never noticed any impediments to texting them... or them me?
      • nickthegreek 3y ago
        Do you guys send media? Group texts with younger cohorts can be filled with gifs, videos, live images, and just regular pics. All of which look like trash when using MMS. This greatly lowers the quality and value of the group chat. People might then remake a group chat without the android user to send the media, and then people just start talking in that group chat and the other dies. While it might not affect you personally, do know that other people behave this way.
  • goosedragons 3y ago
    Better group chats, higher quality images and videos, the reaction instead of "Loved an image" or whatever.
  • dwaltrip 3y ago
    iMessage features not present in MMS: * Reactions * Threaded replies (1 level deep) * You can name group chats and give them a custom image / icon (makes it easier find a group in the list). The name and image is applied for everyone in the group, making it a social thing * You can add / remove someone to a group without having to create an entirely new group chat * higher quality images / videos * works over wifi, without a cell signal * blue bubbles (purely aesthetic, no functional difference, but some people treat it as a status symbol) ——— I really don’t like the lock-in / network effect, but I get why it exists. It’d be nice if a common standard somehow became widespread. Note: It seems reactions are sort of working across platform in recent months? Not sure the latest on this.
    • kyriakos 3y ago
      Other than the fact that it comes pre installed on an iPhone how is it any different than other messengers?
      • dwaltrip 3y ago
        It isn’t. But defaults are quite powerful.
• mcphage 3y ago
  > I'm not going to switch back for only one reason: iMessage. [...] This is why regulators need to do something about the wireless market (operating systems, carriers, and app stores). I'm not sure why any of the regulations proposed would open up iMessage. How would regulations force Apple to develop iMessage for Android?
  • malermeister 3y ago
    If Apple is considered a Gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act [0], they might be forced to open it up - it says this under responsibilities for gatekeepers: > allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations [0] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
• DANmode 3y ago
  So we don't descend into flamewar: call out your favorite bug or misbehavior. Example: it takes me far longer to highlight or otherwise manipulate text than it would on Android or a computer. No, it's not a familiarity issue.
  • smarx007 3y ago
    (i)Books got an update with huge margins, making reading experience on XR untenable. Had to install FBReader to work around this.
  • toxik 3y ago
    There was a moment in time when Apple had solved this with 3D touch. It was surgical precautions. But no, 3D touch was nixed and its replacement for text editing is just insanely bad, like makes no sense at all and I can’t even predict it. I have never seen anybody use it.
    • kaba0 3y ago
      Press on space bar for a time and you can move around. 3D touch was faster indeed, but it works good enough.
      • toxik 3y ago
        This is exactly the “substitute” that I’m talking about. It doesn’t work the same. It’s really buggy and it’s impossible to use.
        • kaba0 3y ago
          It’s slower to initiate but it’s absolutely false to claim it is buggy or impossible to use — it is literally the exact same behavior, it just has to be initiated in different ways.
          • toxik 3y ago
            Nope, it’s not the same. I had both. The only thing that still works is moving the cursor, selection is completely broken. Will it move the left side of the selection? The right side? Nobody knows. It seems it depends how much you selected. I don’t even know actually.
• tyre 3y ago
  > I'm using a phone/OS that I absolutely loathe every day and causes me rage aneurysms, What is so bad that it's provoking this response? Not that I love everything about iOS, but that's a pretty intense reaction.
  • smt88 3y ago
    > that's a pretty intense reaction The biggest problem is notifications. On Android, you use the volume rockers and "do not disturb" mode. That's it. If you press the volume rockers down, the notifications will become quieter until they get to "vibrate only" and then finally "silent". The screen shows you this is happening, and there's always an indicator on the phone. In iOS, there are three different things that affect notifications: 1) Focus, 2) volume settings (if you have that setting turned on), and 3) the physical DnD switch. The physical switch is dangerous to use because it's easy to forget you used it. A lot of the rest of my issues are with Siri. Speech recognition is worse than Microsoft's was in the year 2005. It just doesn't work most of the time. The rest is the UI. Apple's ethos is to hide everything from the user, which they think is "simple" but is incredibly complex. There are a million hidden, inconsistent gestures that you absolutely need to know to use the phone. You just have to mess around until you find them, and then they're impossible to remember because they differ between apps. Then there are things you can only do with Siri! For example, I can delete all my alarms with Siri, but there's no way to do it using the UI.
    • r00fus 3y ago
      As a longtime iOS user who gets dozens of notifications every hour during work hours, I simply have my DND button on at all times. Actual beeps and trills all day would be amazingly annoying.
• matsemann 3y ago
  I can't fathom why all UX designers use iPhone. Half the features are hidden away and people don't know about them. There's like 11 different ways of pressing the home button or so to do different things depending on context. And then they all go and do the same craziness where they work. For instance one can feel that the UX people at Microsoft aren't using Windows as their daily driver. If they did, they would for instance not have wrecked the task bar in W11.
  • sonofhans 3y ago
    FWIW most of those UX designers work for product managers who dictate what they do. Microsoft fucked up their taskbar _institutionally_, not as as result of a couple rogue UX designers. I agree with you about the opacity of gestures in iOS. I don’t like it. I’m used to it, and find many of them to be handy shortcuts, but the lack of discoverability for new users is not good.
  • thiht 3y ago
    What home button?
• Reason077 3y ago
  > "Siri is unfathomably bad." I disagree with most of what you wrote, but this we can agree on! > "I'm not going to switch back for only one reason: iMessage" Weird. Here in the UK there is no iMessage network effect whatsoever because everyone uses WhatsApp for everything. Nobody ever sends me an iMessage unless they're American, or their my Mum who I suspect just hits the wrong app icon sometimes... Yet this doesn't stop a lot, probably a significant majority of people I know, from buying iPhones.
  • drcongo 3y ago
    I'm in the UK and use iMessage and Signal pretty much exclusively. I don't think I know anyone who actually uses WhatsApp outside of school parent groups.
• ErneX 3y ago
  What’s the iMessage effect? Is it the color of the bubbles? That seems to be a US only issue. Most of the other countries barely use SMS and use WhatsApp/Telegram/whatever instead.
  • pmontra 3y ago
    Last time I checked my plan has 100 free SMS per month (Italy.) Imagine what people are using on their phone (Apple or Android) here: iMessage/SMS or WhatsApp?
    • kyriakos 3y ago
      Not sure about Italy but here everyone and their dog have unlimited SMS unlimited data and unlimited local calls. With unlimited data there absolutely no reason to use SMS anymore, especially when everyone has WhatsApp (or similar) installed on their phones.
• surgical_fire 3y ago
  As a long time Android user, a long time ago, I wanted a tablet. All Android tablets seemed to be crap, and I got an iPad. I absolutely hated it. I hate the interface, I hate how iOS works, and I hate how after some years Apple effectively made it absolutely useless. I left it in a recycle bin, promising myself I would never buy another of their products. I used MacOS and iPhone later because those are the machine and on-call phone issued by my employer. Still absolutely hate the interface on both, and I wonder how people put up with this crap.
• kaba0 3y ago
  Honestly, this is such a self-made American problem that is not a thing in anywhere else on the world, that I really believe that no regulation is required here (even though I am usually a fan of government regulations, I can’t wait for sideloading thanks to EU). Like, the rest of the world uses either WhatsApp, Telegram or litany of other choices, the US were just rich enough to buy enough iphones that this effect somehow took hold (plus the strange addiction to SMS due to carrier plans, while we had to quickly forget about it in other places because with non-ascii characters it sucked even more so).
• andrewinardeer 3y ago
  Google is on their knees praying to any of the thousands of deities to answer their wishes and begging for Apple to implement RCS in iMessage. Do you, dear HN reader, think they will?
  • Reason077 3y ago
    Not unless they're forced to. It's the sort of thing that the EU might regulate. Except hardly anyone uses iMessage in Europe so its hard to make the claim they have dominant/monopoly market power in messaging here.