7 ms·

The Pixel and iPhone are really seeming homogenous with each other. The marketing seems similar, typefaces used, the naming conventions are close to the same, t

The Pixel and iPhone are really seeming homogenous with each other. The marketing seems similar, typefaces used, the naming conventions are close to the same, the airbrushed image generators, the photos app marketing that's turning your personal photos into a photoshoot with editing capabilities. On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc.

echelon 2y ago
I wish we had more than two phone giants. This is aggravating. Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle. It'd be amazing if the DOJ made these companies only offer one slice of those four things. There would be so much competition and a wild variety of new things being tried.
- hibikir 2y ago
  As far as the phone hardware goes, Google isn't much of a giant worldwide: Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and probably a few more outsell Google. The pixel is downright rare outside of the US.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    They don't even sell Pixels in most places, the Pixel 9 series is launching in 32 countries, except the Pixel 9 Fold which is only launching in 19. Believe it or not that's a significant improvement from the Pixel 8 series and first Fold which debuted in only 20 and 4 countries respectively.
  - hotdeo 2y ago
    Pixels were the best selling android smartphone of 2023 in Japan. It's gained a lot of popularity recently here in Japan.
    - throw-the-towel 2y ago
      This might be misleading. I've got a Japanese model Pixel -- except that I bought it in Chile, from a Chilean supplier. (Had to root and tinker with some hidden partition just to disable the camera shutter sound.)
      - cl0ckt0wer 2y ago
        I thought that was illegal, but I guess not. https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/why-you-cant-disable-the-shutter-sound-on-japanese-phones/ https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/w...
        throw-the-towel 2y ago
        (For what it's worth, Chile has no such law anyway, so I felt free to do all this.)
    - re-thc 2y ago
      > Pixels were the best selling android smartphone of 2023 in Japan. It's gained a lot of popularity recently here in Japan. Whilst true, it's a bit misleading in the sense it's only best selling by a very slim margin. It's iphone and then everything else (by a huge margin).
  - bla3 2y ago
    It's rare in the US too. Less rare than outside it, but still < 5% market share.
  - caddemon 2y ago
    Also Samsung has been innovating with hardware. I'm not the hugest fan of their flavor of Android but I absolutely love my flip phone and would not consider switching back to iOS or pure Android unless Apple or Google were to make a flip.
    - hnburnsy 2y ago
      Samsung + Universal Android Debloater rocks. You get great hardware and you can remove as much or as little of the Samsung\Google nonsense as you like. https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation/ https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
- vel0city 2y ago
  Google is like 3%ish of the smartphone market in the US. Pixel phones are US-focused, so I can't imagine they're that high worldwide. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share The two big phone giants in the US are Apple and Samsung. Of which Samsung isn't muddling the hardware, OS, software distribution. Maybe platform ecosystem, but generally a Samsung smartwatch or headphones will work with any other Android phone just fine.
  - filoleg 2y ago
    Tangentially related, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by how well Airpods (at least the original ones) worked with Android phones. I got the original Airpods about a year before I switched to iPhone, and they worked pretty much flawlessly with my Galaxy S8+. I assume they missed Siri-specific features (which I don’t care for even after switching to iPhone), and the newer ones probably miss some other more advanced/iOS-specific features (like Apple’s implementation of spatial audio and speech awareness). But all the actual main functionality was there, and I never felt like I was missing out by not using Airpods with iOS. Apple Watch is a different story though, but it kinda makes sense, given how tightly integrated into iOS it is with quite a bit of private health data (that I would never trust Android with managing properly).
    - jsheard 2y ago
      Oddly enough there is an official Android app for Beats headphones, which use the exact same Apple SoCs as AirPods ever since Apple acquired them. They surely could extend that app to work with AirPods too but they've seemingly made the arbitrary decision not to.
      - freeone3000 2y ago
        Why would you want an app for bluetooth headphones?
        jsheard 2y ago
- rangestransform 2y ago
  I would rather have a better phone than more options, apple's 800-pound gorilla-ness gets me a phone with: - an SoC made on TSMC's latest process node, with a humongous die, and all the associated power/performance benefits - because of how many phones apple can sell, they can divide the cost of R&D over more units, and can design things like their own CPU cores - "Ask app not to track" that works, because of the app store monopoly - I don't have to use 12342342345234 payment apps for each bank's credit card, Apple Wallet works with all of them (the EU wants to ruin this for Europeans) As a consumer, I'm a huge fan of US antitrust law, where the test is harm to consumers
  - oorza 2y ago
    There's that old saying that a benevolent dictatorship is the best and most effective form of government, right up until the dictator dies. All of the antitrust shit Apple does largely benefits its consumers _for the moment_. It's worth acknowledging that, but it's also worth acknowledging that this is necessarily a temporary state, and under different leadership, Apple will make different decisions.
    - Bud 2y ago
      [dead]
    - rangestransform 2y ago
      if the antitrust actions actually harm the consumer, then the government can take action EU-style antitrust regulation foists shitty products on customers for the sake of ~~extracting their pound of flesh from US big tech~~ allowing businesses to compete
      - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        > EU-style antitrust regulation foists shitty products on customers for the sake of ~~extracting their pound of flesh from US big tech~~ allowing businesses to compete Sorry, are you an EU citizen? Because I am, and despite the fact that I work in tech, am absurdly happy that they are actually doing antitrust (even if I dislike some of the specific actions). Big, monopolistic companies are problematic (from my perspective) and I welcome all and any actions that make markets more competitive, both as a citizen and as a capitalist.
- oorza 2y ago
  Would there be competition though? Take the mobile app stores: consumers are going to demand that prices are consistent across storefronts (or preferentially buy from the cheapest option), so that market will inevitably race to the bottom. Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Or hardware; if Apple was mandated to support Android on their devices, who do you think is going to pay for the additional testing burden? Apple's certainly not going to take it out of their profit margin, they're going to forward the expense down the line, as will everyone else. You'd be right that there'd be a lot of new ideas floated and a lot of competition, but it's hard to see how that plays out in a way that benefits the consumer and make smart phones a better value. I'm no fan of the duopoly, but it's hard to imagine how forcing them to break their services apart winds up anywhere other than the services becoming noticeably shittier and only like 5% of people bothering to change from the defaults anyway. I also think that the innovation around smartphones has all but died, and if there was some killer innovation to be had, it would probably be worth much more in this market than an open market. The market is harder to make distinctions in than even electric cars are, and a distinguishing innovation would surely trigger a bidding war between Apple and Google at this point. It's a rough case of what I want philosophically (break them up with great prejudice) and what I think is best for the user experience itself being directly at odds.
  - nvy 2y ago
    >Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Do their moderation/review processes meaningfully improve the situation for users? Both app stores are replete with scam/spam/spy/malware apps. I'm not convinced that the app stores are able to materially affect the quality of apps that go through.
    - immibis 2y ago
      They certainly improve the situation for shareholders. I am banned from the Google app store for making an app which was labeled with the service it interacted with, which was trademarked. (Example: If you make a Reddit app, Google won't let you put "Reddit" anywhere in the label without Reddit's legal permission, making it impossible for anyone to discover your app through search, which is the way people discover apps)
- com2kid 2y ago
  > Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle. I think it is more complicated, and nuanced, than this. I have a theory that the world can only support a maximum of 2 consumer computing platforms at a time, due to the cost of writing and porting software. Therefore causing a natural tendency towards either a monopoly (seen in the 90s and early 2000s) or a duopoly (the current smartphone era). The fact is writing software is expensive. Developing cross platform frameworks is also incredibly difficult and in the case of Mobile, has taken a massive 3rd party entity (Facebook) the better part of a decade (React Native) to get even close to "working well" (with other solutions also being decade long projects). One can argue that during the first decade of Android vs iPhone, (2007 to 2017) that the cross platform solutions were all pretty terrible, thus the massive shakeup that React Native (for all its warts) caused. Then there is the fact that developing a consumer OS is hard and expensive. Very few companies have the resources needed to make a consumer OS. Not just writing software, but localization, documentation, SDKs, UX work, security, update infrastructure, and so on and so forth. Honestly I'd say today's current duopoly may even be a bad thing for small software companies, basically doubling development costs. Compare this to the 90s when releasing consumer software just meant compiling for a Microsoft OS and never worrying again because Microsoft handled forwards compatibility for you! Contrast that to now days where you see applications to control smart appliances apps being discontinued left and right because companies cannot justify keeping 2 dev teams staffed so they can patch an app once every couple years when app store guidelines force changes.
  - echelon 2y ago
    I have one counter point for you: HTML If we adopted standards instead of making walled gardens, things would work. If the onus was on Apple and Google to make their platforms standards compliant, and that the egg would be on their face if they didn't, they would be the ones doing the rigorous testing, bug fixing, and optimization. If Microsoft can make their platform work for 20+ years of software, Apple and Google can be on the hook for HTML, WASM, and a standardized UI and hardware abstraction layer.
    - 2y ago
- Bud 2y ago
  [dead]
burningChrome 2y ago
>> On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc. You should go watch the Flossy Carter videos he's done on the Pixel watch. Dude has huge arms and the Pixel watch looks like a Barbie watch on his wrist. He normally rocks the Apple Watch Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy watch which look more normal on his wrist. I think Google has a ways to go before they're competing with Apple and Samsung in the watch department.
- fooker 2y ago
  So, the pixel watch would be fine on people who don't have huge arms? Seems like a decent choice, given that the average person has average arms by definition.

echelon 2y ago

I wish we had more than two phone giants. This is aggravating. Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle. It'd be amazing if the DOJ made these companies only offer one slice of those four things. There would be so much competition and a wild variety of new things being tried.

hibikir 2y ago
As far as the phone hardware goes, Google isn't much of a giant worldwide: Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei and probably a few more outsell Google. The pixel is downright rare outside of the US.
- jsheard 2y ago
  They don't even sell Pixels in most places, the Pixel 9 series is launching in 32 countries, except the Pixel 9 Fold which is only launching in 19. Believe it or not that's a significant improvement from the Pixel 8 series and first Fold which debuted in only 20 and 4 countries respectively.
- hotdeo 2y ago
  Pixels were the best selling android smartphone of 2023 in Japan. It's gained a lot of popularity recently here in Japan.
  - throw-the-towel 2y ago
    This might be misleading. I've got a Japanese model Pixel -- except that I bought it in Chile, from a Chilean supplier. (Had to root and tinker with some hidden partition just to disable the camera shutter sound.)
    - cl0ckt0wer 2y ago
      I thought that was illegal, but I guess not. https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/why-you-cant-disable-the-shutter-sound-on-japanese-phones/ https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/w...
      - throw-the-towel 2y ago
        (For what it's worth, Chile has no such law anyway, so I felt free to do all this.)
  - re-thc 2y ago
    > Pixels were the best selling android smartphone of 2023 in Japan. It's gained a lot of popularity recently here in Japan. Whilst true, it's a bit misleading in the sense it's only best selling by a very slim margin. It's iphone and then everything else (by a huge margin).
- bla3 2y ago
  It's rare in the US too. Less rare than outside it, but still < 5% market share.
- caddemon 2y ago
  Also Samsung has been innovating with hardware. I'm not the hugest fan of their flavor of Android but I absolutely love my flip phone and would not consider switching back to iOS or pure Android unless Apple or Google were to make a flip.
  - hnburnsy 2y ago
    Samsung + Universal Android Debloater rocks. You get great hardware and you can remove as much or as little of the Samsung\Google nonsense as you like. https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation/ https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
vel0city 2y ago
Google is like 3%ish of the smartphone market in the US. Pixel phones are US-focused, so I can't imagine they're that high worldwide. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share The two big phone giants in the US are Apple and Samsung. Of which Samsung isn't muddling the hardware, OS, software distribution. Maybe platform ecosystem, but generally a Samsung smartwatch or headphones will work with any other Android phone just fine.
- filoleg 2y ago
  Tangentially related, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by how well Airpods (at least the original ones) worked with Android phones. I got the original Airpods about a year before I switched to iPhone, and they worked pretty much flawlessly with my Galaxy S8+. I assume they missed Siri-specific features (which I don’t care for even after switching to iPhone), and the newer ones probably miss some other more advanced/iOS-specific features (like Apple’s implementation of spatial audio and speech awareness). But all the actual main functionality was there, and I never felt like I was missing out by not using Airpods with iOS. Apple Watch is a different story though, but it kinda makes sense, given how tightly integrated into iOS it is with quite a bit of private health data (that I would never trust Android with managing properly).
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Oddly enough there is an official Android app for Beats headphones, which use the exact same Apple SoCs as AirPods ever since Apple acquired them. They surely could extend that app to work with AirPods too but they've seemingly made the arbitrary decision not to.
    - freeone3000 2y ago
      Why would you want an app for bluetooth headphones?
      - jsheard 2y ago
rangestransform 2y ago
I would rather have a better phone than more options, apple's 800-pound gorilla-ness gets me a phone with: - an SoC made on TSMC's latest process node, with a humongous die, and all the associated power/performance benefits - because of how many phones apple can sell, they can divide the cost of R&D over more units, and can design things like their own CPU cores - "Ask app not to track" that works, because of the app store monopoly - I don't have to use 12342342345234 payment apps for each bank's credit card, Apple Wallet works with all of them (the EU wants to ruin this for Europeans) As a consumer, I'm a huge fan of US antitrust law, where the test is harm to consumers
- oorza 2y ago
  There's that old saying that a benevolent dictatorship is the best and most effective form of government, right up until the dictator dies. All of the antitrust shit Apple does largely benefits its consumers _for the moment_. It's worth acknowledging that, but it's also worth acknowledging that this is necessarily a temporary state, and under different leadership, Apple will make different decisions.
  - Bud 2y ago
    [dead]
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    if the antitrust actions actually harm the consumer, then the government can take action EU-style antitrust regulation foists shitty products on customers for the sake of ~~extracting their pound of flesh from US big tech~~ allowing businesses to compete
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      > EU-style antitrust regulation foists shitty products on customers for the sake of ~~extracting their pound of flesh from US big tech~~ allowing businesses to compete Sorry, are you an EU citizen? Because I am, and despite the fact that I work in tech, am absurdly happy that they are actually doing antitrust (even if I dislike some of the specific actions). Big, monopolistic companies are problematic (from my perspective) and I welcome all and any actions that make markets more competitive, both as a citizen and as a capitalist.
oorza 2y ago
Would there be competition though? Take the mobile app stores: consumers are going to demand that prices are consistent across storefronts (or preferentially buy from the cheapest option), so that market will inevitably race to the bottom. Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Or hardware; if Apple was mandated to support Android on their devices, who do you think is going to pay for the additional testing burden? Apple's certainly not going to take it out of their profit margin, they're going to forward the expense down the line, as will everyone else. You'd be right that there'd be a lot of new ideas floated and a lot of competition, but it's hard to see how that plays out in a way that benefits the consumer and make smart phones a better value. I'm no fan of the duopoly, but it's hard to imagine how forcing them to break their services apart winds up anywhere other than the services becoming noticeably shittier and only like 5% of people bothering to change from the defaults anyway. I also think that the innovation around smartphones has all but died, and if there was some killer innovation to be had, it would probably be worth much more in this market than an open market. The market is harder to make distinctions in than even electric cars are, and a distinguishing innovation would surely trigger a bidding war between Apple and Google at this point. It's a rough case of what I want philosophically (break them up with great prejudice) and what I think is best for the user experience itself being directly at odds.
- nvy 2y ago
  >Is that better for consumers than Apple and Google operating them and demanding a high enough margin to support moderation and review? Do their moderation/review processes meaningfully improve the situation for users? Both app stores are replete with scam/spam/spy/malware apps. I'm not convinced that the app stores are able to materially affect the quality of apps that go through.
  - immibis 2y ago
    They certainly improve the situation for shareholders. I am banned from the Google app store for making an app which was labeled with the service it interacted with, which was trademarked. (Example: If you make a Reddit app, Google won't let you put "Reddit" anywhere in the label without Reddit's legal permission, making it impossible for anyone to discover your app through search, which is the way people discover apps)
com2kid 2y ago
> Unfortunately due to their market dominance and muddling of (hardware, OS, software distribution, and platform ecosystem), it's almost impossible to disentangle. I think it is more complicated, and nuanced, than this. I have a theory that the world can only support a maximum of 2 consumer computing platforms at a time, due to the cost of writing and porting software. Therefore causing a natural tendency towards either a monopoly (seen in the 90s and early 2000s) or a duopoly (the current smartphone era). The fact is writing software is expensive. Developing cross platform frameworks is also incredibly difficult and in the case of Mobile, has taken a massive 3rd party entity (Facebook) the better part of a decade (React Native) to get even close to "working well" (with other solutions also being decade long projects). One can argue that during the first decade of Android vs iPhone, (2007 to 2017) that the cross platform solutions were all pretty terrible, thus the massive shakeup that React Native (for all its warts) caused. Then there is the fact that developing a consumer OS is hard and expensive. Very few companies have the resources needed to make a consumer OS. Not just writing software, but localization, documentation, SDKs, UX work, security, update infrastructure, and so on and so forth. Honestly I'd say today's current duopoly may even be a bad thing for small software companies, basically doubling development costs. Compare this to the 90s when releasing consumer software just meant compiling for a Microsoft OS and never worrying again because Microsoft handled forwards compatibility for you! Contrast that to now days where you see applications to control smart appliances apps being discontinued left and right because companies cannot justify keeping 2 dev teams staffed so they can patch an app once every couple years when app store guidelines force changes.
- echelon 2y ago
  I have one counter point for you: HTML If we adopted standards instead of making walled gardens, things would work. If the onus was on Apple and Google to make their platforms standards compliant, and that the egg would be on their face if they didn't, they would be the ones doing the rigorous testing, bug fixing, and optimization. If Microsoft can make their platform work for 20+ years of software, Apple and Google can be on the hook for HTML, WASM, and a standardized UI and hardware abstraction layer.
  - 2y ago
Bud 2y ago
[dead]

burningChrome 2y ago

>> On top of that you've got the same earbuds form factor, smart watches, etc. You should go watch the Flossy Carter videos he's done on the Pixel watch. Dude has huge arms and the Pixel watch looks like a Barbie watch on his wrist. He normally rocks the Apple Watch Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy watch which look more normal on his wrist. I think Google has a ways to go before they're competing with Apple and Samsung in the watch department.

fooker 2y ago
So, the pixel watch would be fine on people who don't have huge arms? Seems like a decent choice, given that the average person has average arms by definition.