11 ms·

Setting up phones is a nightmare

194 points by bariumbitmap 7mo ago

addaon 7mo ago
The article is about how setting up /Android/ phones is a nightmare. Contrasting it to my experience setting up iPhones is… dramatic.
- DiabloD3 7mo ago
  Yes, its a nightmare because Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do. Android phone manufacturers want $1200 for something that is a toy, just like the Apple iToys. Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Google needs to get out of the business and let the FOSS community handle it.
  - latexr 7mo ago
    That type of rhetoric won’t get you what you want. Don’t dismiss something just because you don’t like it. iOS devices are not toys, and even if they were there is value in toys, and even if there weren’t it is provably false that “nobody wants those”. Furthermore, if Google dropped Android it is misguided to believe “the FOSS community” would handle it and everything would be roses. What you’d have then are a couple of hardware vendors (like Samsung) publishing their own forks and dozens of different incompatible open-source versions that would get no traction.
    - bigyabai 7mo ago
      > iOS devices are not toys iOS devices are. My iPad is the most useless piece of technology I own, calling it a "computer" is an insult to the actual computers I own. It's a toy, and not even a fun toy compared to my Nintendo Switch. Android handles serious workloads fine, macOS takes software seriously. iOS is the only operating system that treats gatchapon as the pinnacle of high-performance workloads.
      - bigyabai 7mo ago
        Hell, I'll double-down if you really disagree with me. ChromeOS, the operating system/spyware installed on e-waste like Chromebooks, has a more serious OS than iOS. It is more functional and capable, and undeniably the better professional OS. I say that with no love for ChromeOS. iOS exists in a class of it's own, functionality-wise. A class much closer to game consoles than anything resembling a computer.
        latexr 7mo ago
        > Hell, I'll double-down if you really disagree with me. No wonder the world is in its current state, if when faced with disagreement the reaction is “I’ll plug my ears and dig my heels in deeper” instead of “I wonder if I’m missing something”. > ChromeOS (…) has a more serious OS than iOS. It is (…) the better professional OS. For starters, there are professionals (as in, people who get paid to do a job) who do their work on iOS. Not programmers, but writers, illustrators, animators, video editors, photographers, film makers… Maybe you can’t (or refuse to even try?) doing your work on an iOS device—I certainly choose not to—but that in no way means no one does. But all of that is irrelevant when you consider the very true fact of life that not everything is about work. Many people want something else, and not making all one’s computing decisions around work is healthy.
        bigyabai 7mo ago
        > there are professionals (as in, people who get paid to do a job) who do their work on iOS I don't doubt it. There are people who get paid to do their work on a web browser, if iOS wasn't capable of that it would be a travesty. The flexibility of iOS pales in comparison to the absolute worst desktop OSes, like Windows and ChromeOS. The DAW, IDE and NLE software on iOS outright cannot compete with the offerings on Windows, macOS and Linux. > Many people want something else, and not making all one’s computing decisions around work is healthy. You've conceded the original point, then. I can do "real work" with an Xbox, toy shovel or Lego bricks, but it's still a toy at the end of the day. The real tragedy is that iPad and iPhone hardware doesn't have to be limited by toyetic software. It's entirely Apple's choice to restrict my iPad from supporting WINE, having Linux containers and running actual IDEs that aren't arbitrarily gimped by distribution terms.
  - mikestew 7mo ago
    Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Just because you don’t want it doesn’t mean <checks notes…> a billion or so people don’t want an iPhone. Or rather, a phone they don’t have to dick with straight out of the box. OTOH, I don’t really even know what you’re on about. Android is a nightmare because…it’s like iOS, which is “take phone out of box, restore from backup, sorted”? That doesn’t even make any sense, especially in light of what TFA describes.
    - mhitza 7mo ago
      For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice. Not a coherent or direct software+ecosystem choice. I've seen arguments around chosing iPhone for their camera. But the vast majority that is tech iliterate stops around that argument.
      - mikestew 7mo ago
        For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice. People in your area are very forthcoming. Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol. “Easy to use”, “it’s what my friends use, and they like it”, but never “it makes me appear higher in the social strata”. They might think it, and I’m sure some do, but it’s not said out loud. Or maybe that’s not why the majority buy iPhones, dunno.
        mhitza 7mo ago
        My area is eastern europe. Where an iphone is like 3-4 minimum wage salaries or so. People take loans to buy iphones! And you could probably also correlate them with luxury item buyers, around here. Good thing the US message color thing is isolated over there and the peer pressure on Gen Alpha hasn't reached us. But yes, I stick to my claim. You don't have to hard press those people to tell you that they don't use phones "for poor people" . The idiom is local and used both ironically and literraly.
        mikestew 7mo ago
  - fn-mote 7mo ago
    > Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do The article shows this is not true, if you know the similar process for iOS. The article could be compared to the iPhone setup process. There are some preferences to uncheck, but there is no third party spying software on an iPhone when it arrives. Contrast to Samsung.
- butILoveLife 7mo ago
  To be fair, they are doing with a Samsung phone, and Samsung is the Apple of Android (Big marketing budget, mid quality if we are being generous). Samsung as a company is a universal No Buy. The fact OP bought Samsung makes me raise an eyebrow. Credit to Apple where credit is due. When I unboxed my first iphone, I was happy to give Apple all my personal information, birthday, emails, ssn.... It was bizarre, I'm usually apprehensive to give this stuff away, but Apple made it fun. Within a few days, I was disappointed by a lack of widgets, slow transitions between screens, and a buggy podcast app. But the damage was done, my company was out $600 and Apple had my contact info.
  - jeroenhd 7mo ago
    Samsung's UI and software behaviour may be shitty in general, but they're one of the few manufacturers reliably offering timely long-term security updates. When you go beyond Samsung, you quickly end up with brands promising "quarterly updates" or having months-long delays fixing CVEs. Plus, when they do something novel, they do it quite well. Their flagship phones have great price/performance if you buy them a month or two after launch (often for three quarters of the launch price + free earbuds/smartwatch + cashback), their software suite is quite complete and generally well-localised, and they have support channels non-English support channels available. I do wish they'd fix some of their terrible software design crimes and stop the endless race to the bottom shoving product placement into their apps, but it's hardly a no-buy to me.
    - microtonal 7mo ago
      Pixel is much cleaner and ships security updates monthly like clockwork. Plus you can install GrapheneOS and you get security updates multiple times per month, no AI nonsense and sandboxed Google Play Services if you need it.
- Analemma_ 7mo ago
  It's pick-your-poison. iPhone setup is eight hundred screens, half of which are upsells for Apple services, but at least it's only Apple services. Android setup, if you're not on a Pixel, is an invitation for the vendor's dozens of "partners" to all get your money and all your data.
- jeroenhd 7mo ago
  My personal experience is that the setup procedure wildly depends on the phone's vendor. The biggest difference between setting up a Pixel and an iPhone I experienced was that Google asked for certain settings beforehand that I had to turn off in the settings after setup on iOS. Both would've been a lot faster if I hadn't tried to disable optional account stuff. Contrast that to Samsung, especially their non-flagship models, where the setup wizard took forever because of the crap Samsung added to the process. That said, I do appreciate some "tutorial" parts of the setup process on Android. When I first set up an iPhone, I got the distinct impression that Apple assumed I already knew how to do everything. Their interface isn't exactly intuitive if you haven't used iOS before, no matter what online forums may claim. It took me several tries and a Google search to figure out how to remove apps, for instance. Perhaps one might find it an annoying extra step you're going to skip as a power user who's used to the platform, but it felt strange to be dropped into a strange, new operating environment with no instructions.
- monooso 7mo ago
  A Samsung phone. I've owned several (not Samsung) Android phones, and have never had to deal with such nonsense.
  - dismalaf 7mo ago
    On Samsung phones you can skip making a Samsung account. All the Google bits still work and it's basically the same as having a Pixel, except you'll have a few unused apps, a different camera and phone app and a very slightly different UI.
    - morsch 7mo ago
      I had to guess arcane adb permission commands to stop a 2025 Samsung tablet from nagging the user about creating a Samsung account. It just kept showing up multiple times a day. But nice enough hardware with the promise of long updates at a reasonable price.
  - ihaveazflip6 7mo ago
    Heck, I own a zflip 6 right now and the ONLY hard requirement out of everything in the article I gone through was the google account. And I know of a way to get rid of it too, it would just break a couple of things. I had mi phones before and they had only one hard requirement of needed a xiaomi account for developer mode. I circumvented it. The article isn't just a pathetic piece of writting in general, it's also operating on tip top tier redditor-brained US-defaultism where "Android = Pixel/Samsung". I have no idea why the crowd here is letting it stick around.
  - clearleaf 7mo ago
    Samsung phones are the most bloated pieces of shit I have ever seen. Mine came with an app just to view the msn.com web site and it couldn't be uninstalled. You have google and samsung in a tug of war over every single thing the phone does. I thought my home button was breaking because of how unresponsive it was, but it turned out it just waits for a sequence to trigger such and such unwanted AI assistant or whatever the hell. It's a crapshoot whether you accidentally launch google assistant or bixby or some other crap service you never even heard of. There are touchwiz sound effects that I hear in public and to this day it sends a chill down my spine because it brings me back to so much miserable time spent with that abomination of electronics.
- dismalaf 7mo ago
  This article is a disaster. Beyond logging into your Google account nothing they described in the article is required to set up an Android phone.
iberator 7mo ago
It is not. Takes like 30 seconds
- Pikamander2 7mo ago
  If you want your brand new phone to be filled with adware apps and obnoxious default settings, sure.
  - dismalaf 7mo ago
    Customizing it to your liking is different than "setting it up".
  - hagbard_c 7mo ago
    You bought the wrong phone and/or put the wrong distribution on it. Having said this it does take more than 30 seconds to get a new device up to your personal specs unless you're fine with whatever vendor distribution runs on it - which can work if you choose the right vendor but mostly ends up with your device serving someone else. I'd say it takes closer to 30 minutes than 30 seconds but I'm fine with taking this time given that my average Android phone lifetime is a bit over 8 years. I'm currently using a Redmi Note 5 Pro from 2018 which I'll soon relegate to second device status once I have a replacement, probably a Motorola G75 or something similar. That device should also last me around 8 years. Before the Redmi I'm using now I used a Motorola Defy from 2010 which, incidentally, is still in use as a trailer camera. Android devices can last a very long time because the firmware is open. Eventually they'll be too slow or lack the memory to support more recent Android distributions - which is what made me replace the Defy with the Redmi - but that does not mean they end up taking space in a drawer somewhere. They're in use here as trailer camera, media player, 3D printer controller and more.
sonofhans 7mo ago
“Phones” in the title is doing lots of heavy lifting. “Android phones” is the key missing piece. I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business. The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.
- jraph 7mo ago
  A lot of the complains expressed in this article are distinctly from the proprietary parts. Stock Android, and especially stock Samsung, is far from being a free software solution. A turnkey solution based (almost exclusively, and except the driver blobs) on free software would be to buy a phone running something like /e/. I think they also provide backups. Of course, stuff requiring SafetyNet (or whatever Google current oppressive attestation system) may not work (though microG makes some of it work).
  - microtonal 7mo ago
    I think they also provide backups Sort of. They use SeedVault, but a bunch of apps are not backed up. When restoring another set of apps do not properly restore
- hagbard_c 7mo ago
  What is it in your life which makes it 'impossible' to use free software, Google-free AOSP-derived Android distributions being part of this? I run close to exclusively free software and have done so for decades and have yet to feel the need to change this. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. I need to run proprietary applications for banking and electronic ID but those are the exceptions to the rule. My server runs only free software, on desktop I sometimes run an older version of Sketchup to start modelling things but that's the only non-free package I use there. We have children, a cat, a dog, 4 horses, a farm, a large forest, the works. We have multi-device backup and restore as well. Things work fine, using free software, not using 'the cloud'. Where are the sticking points for you and what would it take to take those away?
hollow-moe 7mo ago
I fear every single time I have to switch phones. Being degoogled means I first have to choose hardware based on custom ROMs compatibility, and fight the thing to just install the ROM. Then the fun begins, for every single stupid feature I have to install and setup a solution (app) optionally restoring a backup individually. Contacts, calendar, files, maps, passwords, airtag protection, email, IM, keyboard, weather, notes, smart garbage:tm:, alternative YouTube client...The state of current tech is pityful, if it wasn't what I was doing to put food on the table I wouldn't want any of this garbage 10 meters near me. Edit: Before any of the geniuses here says "at least you can use alternatives" I don't want to hear your copium, it's obvious this won't last.
nvartolomei 7mo ago
Upgraded to one of the latest iPhone recently. First time I clicked on “transfer data from old phone”. I’m used to reinstalling the operating system every couple of months from when I used Windows. It took maybe 15 minutes with close to 0 interactions. Everything was transferred. I was already authenticated in apps. What took manual steps was eSIM transfers. I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.
- sentientslug 7mo ago
  eSIM transfer also typically doesn’t require any intervention, usually it just goes across to the new device
  - wtmt 7mo ago
    The key word here is “typically”. Transferring eSIM from one iPhone to another can be restricted by the carrier. Here in India, the second largest carrier (Airtel), does not support the native iOS eSIM transfer process. It’s a separate set of steps (the ones published on Airtel’s website won’t work, despite customer care claiming that it does). What works is almost like applying for a new or replacement eSIM.
    - microtonal 7mo ago
      Same here, KPN, NL. You have to install the KPN app on the new phone and log in. Then you request an eSIM on the new phone. You get an SMS auth code on the old phone. You fill the auth code on the new phone. Then you have to remove the eSIM from the old phone (with the new one not provisioned yet). Then confirm on the new phone and cross your fingers that provisioning works. Presumably (according to the docs) when it fails, you can reprovision the old phone again. The process made me so anxious the last few times, that I went to the carrier shop and asked for a nano SIM. Now life is bliss again. It seems that eSIM is primarily an advantage when you need to get a new SIM, but other than that I don't really see much of an advantage for me as a customer.
deejaaymac 7mo ago
If you use android and don't choose GrapheneOS then idk what to tell you, its been an awesome experience with no issues for the last ~5ish years I've used it.
- microtonal 7mo ago
  Yep, no cloud storage upsells, no pushy AI crap, just a fast barebones smartphone and you can pick what you want on top.
- drittich 7mo ago
  Tell me why they only support Google Pixel phones, v6 through 10.
  - hollerith 7mo ago
    Those are the only phones that meet their stringent requirements. They have been talking to a manufacturer with the goal of getting a non-Pixel phone on the market that meets the requirements.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 7mo ago
      That's Motorola
- 71bw 7mo ago
  Can't use my bank.
dismalaf 7mo ago
This is literally the midwit meme... Here's how you actually set up an Android phone: - log into Google account - select a few checkboxes (basically just if you want to restore apps or not) - done, everything else is automatic All the fuckery they decided to do because they think they're tech savvy wasn't required.
- urbandw311er 7mo ago
  You don’t sound very tech savvy yourself to be honest! Well, certainly not security conscious or in anyway concerned about data privacy.
  - dismalaf 7mo ago
    You thinking anything OP did improves security or data privacy proves the midwit meme...
lnrd 7mo ago
Giving an Android phone to elderly/non-technical people is asking for trouble imho. They will eventually tap their way into installing suspicious apps, adware or even straight up malware. It's inevitable, they are not aware of what they do and how to avoid the many risks of the digital world. I remember having the same struggles of OP when setting up a cheap android phone for my grandma, the amount of bloat, adware and misleading content I had to remove was incredible (and some couldn't even be removed). The irony was that after a few months of light usage, the phone was in a state even worse, full of downloaded apps and opened suspicious websites in the browser. She would swear she never even noticed any of those. This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.
- microtonal 7mo ago
  FYI: you can also set up parental controls on Android. Parental control is a also a hot buggy mess on iOS currently. Our daughter has an iPhone with parental control set up and a bunch of apps that are whitelisted regularly refuse to start at random moments (blocked by parental controls). We hoped that iOS 26 would finally fix it, but nope. It doesn't really matter, both phone ecosystems are a mess, but in different ways.
- rationalist 7mo ago
  My mother can no longer do the stuff she used to on her iOS phone because it is so complicated compared to the iPhone 4 I gave her a long time ago. I screen her emails with her consent, very easy to do with Fastmail that imports her Yahoo mail into a folder she doesn't see and then I move okay emails to her inbox.
  - SuzyM 7mo ago
    Have you tried Assistive Access mode? https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphone/devcd5016d31/ios https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
    - 7mo ago
1970-01-01 7mo ago
Setting up enshittified devices is the nightmare. Don't curse out on all phones because they made a poor purchase decision. You're literally buying it wrong. Next time go with a slightly used device that's fully supported by GrapheneOS and marvel at the frictionless setup.
ray_v 7mo ago
Is it not clear that's it's just the well-known phenomenon, "enshittification" at play? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
juancn 7mo ago
iPhones are basically effort free, it takes a while, but 99% of it is transferred without a hitch, some poorly written apps may need an extra step.
freitasm 7mo ago
Another thing that annoys me on Android is the setup experience itself. All my recent device presentcthe same behaviour: login with a Google account, transfer data, setup voice assistant and some other defaults,done. Then after the first app updates is done, a notification comes with "let's finish setting up your phone" and again asks to setup voice assistant, check defaults and whatever else is in the flow. Has no one noticed that the setup flow seems to run twice? And it's not one specific device. I do it with eight to ten devices a year, from different OEM, writing reviews and testing. They all have the same behaviour.
- freitasm 7mo ago
  Another annoying thing: very few apps are copied from old device to new devices and bring their settings and most importantly login. Of about 80 apps on my device, only five or so are ready to use after a migration. Going through dozens of apps, doing logins, 2FAcand changing settings is a PITA. Devs do a poor job on that front.
  - jeroenhd 7mo ago
    Developers basically need to opt out not to use that feature. 2FA apps do that for understandable reasons (including on iOS). In my experience just about everything but WhatsApp and maybe Signal work out of the box for apps downloaded through GPlay.
- kirenida 7mo ago
  I noticed that as well, I thought it was just a bug or a conflict because I used Smart Switch instead of a "built-in" Android tool.
- breisa 7mo ago
  Isn't that just Google trying to dark-pattern you into finally clicking that checkboxes you unchecked during setup?
Animats 7mo ago
I'm dreading having to buy a new rugged Android phone. I have one where all the stuff I don't want is turned off. F-Droid, Firefox, FairEmail, DuckDuckGo, no Google account. Getting a new phone into that configuration may not be possible. The major brands are more and more locked down, and the minor brands can't be trusted. I have a Cat phone now. The actual manufacturer, Bullett, went bankrupt. Can't get the small rubber parts needed to maintain the waterproofing. Suggestions?
- Gander5739 7mo ago
  You could get a pixel and flash grapheneos. Most stock roms will require google services.
  - gib444 7mo ago
    Pixels are far from rugged
teekert 7mo ago
Sounds like setting up Windows. The amount of explaining of “why you don't want or need that” was insane. I got Ubuntu down to 10 min or so. Including my fav apps. (I won’t make the comparison to setting up NicOS with a ready to go config ;))
hkbuilds 7mo ago
The worst part is that it keeps getting harder, not easier. Every new phone setup asks you to connect more accounts, enable more permissions, and configure more services. I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours. Between 2FA migrations, app re-authentication, and trying to figure out which backup actually had their data, it was miserable. Phone manufacturers have zero incentive to make cross-platform migration easy. Apple wants you to stay on iPhone. Google wants you to stay on Android. The user suffers.
- suzzer99 7mo ago
  > I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours I give a silent thanks every day that my dad still has a flip phone and no desire to upgrade.
lsc4719 7mo ago
Why don't use `smartswitch` built-in feature of Samsung phones?
hvenev 7mo ago
I personally call this process of setting up a new device, whether for me or for someone else, "shit shoveling". It is something of a ritual. In the former case the thing that needs to be removed is the entirety of the OS (and if that proves to be impossible, the device is returned or discarded), and in the latter it's a scan of all apps and removal of all unnecessary apps, my grandma does not need Samsung Galaxy Games, thank you very much.
MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
“I bought terrible Google slopware and struggled with it” Insightful stuff. Adults buy iPhones.
- 71bw 7mo ago
  Adults do not waste their time arguing about the "superiority" of one platform - based on subjective choices - online.
bossyTeacher 7mo ago
Vivaldi over Firefox. I would love to hear the reasoning.
- layman51 7mo ago
  Same here! I'm assuming it has more to do with the mobile app experience than anything else.
user3939382 7mo ago
I do SIP and Asterisk. I read the title and was like I know right! Oh smartphones. Setting it up is the tip of an iceberg whereas consumers and society as a whole are pay huge prices in several currencies for phones which are tremendously over engineered for and not fit for, purpose. The entire stack from Von Veumann to 5G has to go.
- dredmorbius 7mo ago
  Care to detail (or point to details of) your setup?
timedude 7mo ago
None of those problems exist on GrapheneOS. In fact i regularly do a clean wipe and am up and running again in minutes.
- mid-kid 7mo ago
  How do you back up and restore things without root? I've found that even with root, these days many backups are useless thanks to using hardware-backed encryption...
  - gib444 7mo ago
    (not OP but been on Grapheneos for a couple of years). I don't. I transfer any important data like photos to a real computer weekly Mail, Calendar and Contacts are handled by IMAP and DavX. Passwords are in 1Password I have minimal apps so setting up a new device wouldn't be too much trouble
  - timedude 7mo ago
    There are various options, but if you use syncthing, it is as easy as creating a share on your PC or backup machine and on the phone. Everything gets synced automatically.
    - gib444 7mo ago
      > Everything gets synced automatically That's not true though, is it? "Everything" kind of implies an iPhone-style backup. You can't do that without root AIUI Maybe you can give us more details about how you achieve a full up-and-running restore "in minutes"? I run GrapheneOS so very interested. (Syncthing for Android is deprecated, too)
      - timedude 7mo ago
        Well everything you chose to sync gets synced. Like photos, documents etc. You can also set up apps in such a way where they make automatic local backups on your phone in the folder that gets synced. There are multiple android apps for syncthing
pooper 7mo ago
For those on iPhones or respectable mobile network operators, not everyone has as good of an experience as you do. For people who buy subsidized Android-based phones from some carriers such as Metro by T-Mobile USA, they either come with bloatware baked in or they download the bloatware when you first activate the device or something like that. These things are fairly easy to disable if you know what you are doing but if you don't know what you are doing, I can imagine people will simply put up with ads showing up every time you pick up the phone. It can get annoying VERY quickly.
spaqin 7mo ago
It used to be better. I've been running Android custom ROMs since Gingerbread days, on HTC HD2. At that time, I'd be flashing nightlies, switching between CyanogenMod and Paranoid Android, kernels, getting bootloops. Setting up the phone was no big deal - most apps could be backed up with Titanium Backup, few that couldn't (e.g. banking) would just get redownloaded and I'd log in immediately. I was also still a student back then and had more time to tinker, but if it was anything like it is now, I would've given up much quicker. In the last year I had to do few clean flashes with changing my phone, then updating LineageOS, and once the phone just wiped itself for no reason. Backups don't work for most apps - even if you can get one, they'll crash without a specific reason. 2FA everywhere is mostly security theater, with apps that have no business keeping my data but insisting on it, using SMS, email, authenticators, selfies. Banking apps needing two layers of root detection circumvention (because a custom ROM is already problematic, so you need root to stop them from detecting an unlocked bootloader, and then again not to detect root). Google insisting on sending a security check notification to a phone that's just been wiped with no ability to confirm that it's really you from your PC (but if you give it few minutes, it will give in and let you verify with SMS), always feels like hacking yourself. It's a massive pain already on a clean, bloatware-free custom ROM, with a truly minimum app list. Once you need to start debloating the official OS, it's another hour or three, depending if they're nice and let you uninstall things or if you need adb access to disable offending packages.
- ssl-3 7mo ago
  I found that TiBackup was both the secret sauce that allowed for playing with ROMs with impunity, and also my primary reason for rooting phones back in the day even when I was just using phones in stock form. It was the first app I ever spent money on, and I did so without any hesitation at all. It was just genuinely useful to be able to back up and restore my own data on my own devices, and to do so on my own accord. It was a process that I owned, and controlled, and if it went wrong somehow then I was able to troubleshoot it and make sensible decisions. I haven't had a rooted phone in a decade or so now. These days, backups allegedly happen -- somehow -- and the entire process seems to be both deliberately and inscrutably shrouded in mystery. When I switch devices or reset to factory to try to fix an eSIM issue (or whatever I do that makes restoration a useful path today), then it's never clear before I start whether the backup/restore will magically work or if it will simply fail without recourse. The uncertainty demonstrates a reprehensibly terrible way to deal with backups.
pibaker 7mo ago
I am an iPhone user myself, but the number of "this is an android problem" and "just use iPhone" in response to the author's complaints surprises me. I thought HN was more anti apple in the past? Maybe we are all old now and tinkering with our devices is out of fashion, but this doesn't make the author's complaints illegitimate. And if we zoom out a bit, iPhones are only 20% of the global phone market. The overwhelming majority of the world uses android because, well, iPhones are expensive. There are plenty of places where an iPhone is still a status symbol. Even you think the author should have bought his parents iPhones instead, there is still a whole world of people out there who would benefit from improvements in the android ecosystem.
- kwanbix 7mo ago
  I don't use Android because iPhones are more expensive. In fact you can get Android phones that are as expensive and sometimes more expensive than iPhones. I use Android phones because it is a much more flexible ecosystem, where I can choose my browser, for example.
  - krick 7mo ago
    Exactly what I was going to say. I don't use iPhone because, well, it's iPhone. And until, like, this year, it was strictly more prohibitive than Android. Also, it was honestly just worse of a device than some Android flagships, and the tradeoff is only worth it if you are a lazy USA-ian, who doesn't use any "sketchier" non-mainstream apps, has an Apple account and owns a bunch of Apple devices anyway. Oh, and all your friends use iPhone Messages app. Then iPhone is the default. But outside of USA it was always more of a gimmick than a natural choice. That being said, even if you wouldn't have said it before me, I probably shouldn't have said it too anyway, because I suspect that globally speaking the GP is right. Most people don't buy flagships, yet everybody has a phone. And Apple doesn't even try to compete in "non-premium" market, it's strictly impossible to buy a new iPhone for the price of some Redmi or whatever, which isn't even noticeably worse than an iPhone, practically speaking.
    - daliusd 7mo ago
jeffbee 7mo ago
If you think this setup process is a drag, imagine what a pain in the neck it is to try to use your phone after your paranoid son has fucked it all up like this.
jazzyjackson 7mo ago
Get a Sonim XP3+ It's an android (11) flip phone but without Google store and without touchscreen, so almost nothing works on it There's no setup, besides disabling the PTT button and making it open the application of your choice (as long as your choice is Clock, Voice Memo, or Music/FM Radio) The ability to slam the phone shut to hang up, and call via speed dial without opening the "phone" app more than makes up for the lack of Instagram. If you want a chatbot put 1800CHATGPT on your speed dial
- ddtaylor 7mo ago
  Seems like it will cause me to get stuck at an airport or train station while an employee tells me about the virtues of an app.
  - jazzyjackson 7mo ago
    This is a possibility, but so far the only public place I've found lacking any paper backup has been ticketmaster music venues And malls that replaced their maps/hours with QR codes but this seems to be a California thing so can be avoided by not being Californian
Normal_gaussian 7mo ago
I'm in the UK. I use a pixel, but also have iPhones and iPads for work reasons. My wife has a Samsung, my mother a Motorola etc. I set up phones several times a year. What the author describes is not a problem if you go "all in" on your manufacturer. iOS or Android. If you tick the cloud sync functions you can restore apps and copy data with a two or three step wizard. If you pay for the cloud storage level, you will have enough space for your photos etc. it's really a non event. But if you don't go all in with your manufacturer. E.g you consider Google an untrustworthy custodian of your photos, or decide you'll stick with the free iCloud account etc. You're in for a world of tiny pains.
- krick 7mo ago
  Honestly, I would say that even in the latter case the painfulness of the process is a bit overstated. Sure, it's not great. But if you treat it just as a new device and don't expect to just continue from where you've left it on the previous phone, you'll make it under 30 minutes anyway. Half of it is playing with the UI of the new version of the OS and getting annoyed at the fact that the apps are not the same anyway, because on the previous device you refused to update an app after they fucked up it's UI, and now you must to get an old apk which won't even work anyway on the brand new Androip v99 or whatever.
drnick1 7mo ago
The best phone experience, by far, if you hate bloat and spyware is GrapheneOS on a Pixel. No accounts, no logins, no restrictions on side loading, and most Android apps that aren't affected by the Play Integrity cancer just work. You can even install Google apps if you want, but my preference is to use FOSS apps only.
- krick 7mo ago
  Surely, it depends on your particular vendors, but don't you have any problems with banking apps and such? I honestly just don't know, didn't try messing with firmware in a while. Do you use Revolut or something similar?
  - mannanj 7mo ago
    I have found websites for accessing my banking to be pretty great. Do we really need banking apps?
    - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
      This doesn't answer the question though. If someone says "how do I have safe sex" you don't suggest abstinence.
      - mannanj 7mo ago
        his question was "Dont you have any problems with banking apps?" and I answered indirectly that I don't use them. Maybe you just are fixating on only particular answers being acceptable.
    - azuanrb 7mo ago
      In my country, we do. For starters, we use apps for authentication and notifications. We can debate whether web push is viable, but most banking apps simply do not rely on it. As for older people, I would rather they use an app than a website because it is far too easy to fall victim to phishing attacks, no matter how much we educate them.
rl3 7mo ago
https://github.com/mobile-nixos/mobile-nixos https://github.com/mobile-nixos/mobile-nixos TIL this exists. Here's hoping we see some type of NixOS + Graphene mashup one day.
TheRoque 7mo ago
Somehow, I recently migrated phones, and I don't find it a "nightmare". Was fairly straightforward. Xiaomi Redmi to S25+.
raincole 7mo ago
Just like always, average Android phone users get the worst of both worlds. Android is supposed to be the freer option, but in reality only very tech savvy users are enjoying the freedom (and they install custom ROMs anyway).
kirenida 7mo ago
Regarding users creating new accounts on phone setup: Recently I encountered a user that had created a new Google account when switching to a new device... on their last 5 devices. So when they switched to the latest one and called me to set up the phone, I had to wrangle the contacts, photos, cloud storage and whatnot from all of those accounts. Another pain point for me (in the EU/Balkans) is the transfer of Whatsapp and Viber. For reasons unknown, the accounts, contacts, chats, downloaded data can't be transferred during device setup. The only way to transfer data to a new device is to create a cloud backup on the old phone, which requires creating a wapp/viber account and setting up the google drive backup (local backup to a file? lol no. Any other cloud service available? lol no). Of course, when dealing with a media-heavy user (lots of photos, lots of memes/videos from group chats that are automatically downloaded to the phone), often is the case that the cloud storage tied to the google account doesn't have enough space for the backups, because it is filled with the automatic google photos backup that nobody turns off. And the user usually doesn't want to pay for extra space on Google because they don't understand why or just plainly don't want to. So yeah, the transfer process is slow and complicated and full of traps, but it also offers an insight in to how much the imaginary "average consumer" doesn't care about this stuff and just agrees to everything offered.
- yonatan8070 7mo ago
  WhatsApp can do a local backup to /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp I have that set up, and Nextcloud syncs the folder to my server
  - tsaika 7mo ago
    Yes, but WhatsApp is very finiky about restoring that backup when you're setting up a new device. Due to this, I've resorted to backing up to drive without any media and then after restore, sync the media back via other means. It's also worth mentioning that when you sync with drive, it doesn't preserve the time stamps of devices
    - eMPee584 7mo ago
      As usual, root and sshfs make this all a lot more bearable. Alas, no online-banking or digital health insurance services, lol.
gib444 7mo ago
iPhones are nice but all that iCloud data is a privacy nightmare especially without Advanced Data Protection, which the UK Gov caused Apple to stop offering in the UK (and I can see that extending to the E U). Friction can be good in life. Good food takes effort etc. When it comes to phones, there is the issue of privacy, security and phone addiction. When the mobile is hard to use (eg Grapheneos - no offence), it can force you to use a real computing device for most of your needs
Tzk 7mo ago
What I hate the most about setting up new devices up is apple MDM on our company-managed devices combined with data transfer via iTunes backup. Here’s why: 1. The devices will offer to transfer data wirelessly, but won’t tell you that some data isn’t transferred. Instead using iTunes is a must as (in our case) more data is copied. This excludes data from managed apps - understandable. 2. When updating and recovering the backup on the new device is done, the regular setup experience starts. But, as your WiFi is also copied over, the device starts trying to update and install apps in the background, even before you logged into your Apple ID. So you’re constantly annoyed by popups asking for the ID. If you try to enter it, another pop up will interrupt amd stop you from entering the credentials. It even aborts touch/face ID setup and makes you start over again. I’ve had some colleagues starting over on Touch ID for like 5 times before they were faster than the popups. That mixes with popups for company accounts like mail credentials. And even a required change of the unlock password. Sometimes up to 10 different popups spawn in a few seconds… Seriously, why? Is it that hard to stop these prompts till the setup is done and then prompt the user for everything needed once?
Surac 7mo ago
Years ago i bought a Device because i wanted to use it. It had cool features or provided a benefit to me. Today if i buy a device (just any device) i decide which Device will be the lease anoying one. Often this ends in not buying a device and use a old but reliant way of doing things.
Frostline 7mo ago
Hack
deng 7mo ago
Transferring to a new Android phone without depending on Google cloud is a total nightmare. It doesn't help that there's a ton of outdated information in the net on how to do that. You can see it in this very thread: lots of people saying "do a local Whatsapp backup, transfer the backup manually": this USED to work but does NOT anymore. There is a decryption key in /data/data/com.whatsapp, which of course you can only access on rooted phones (maybe there's a way to approve the transfer when the old phone is still working, not sure). To the best of my knowledge, it is basically impossible to fully transfer applications locally to new phones without root access. The ONLY reliable way to transfer to a new phone: - root your phone - get NeoBackup (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.backup/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.backup/) and grant superuser permission to it - do a FULL backup of the apps you want to transfer, that means it must also include "device protected data" - restore apps on your new phone If you'd like regular backups of apps: create scheduled backup with NeoBackup to a local folder and sync them with whatever tool you want to external storage. Good luck with that, you'll need it.
WhyNotHugo 7mo ago
We’ve had decades during which we could have educated more and more people on how use tech. Instead, the industry embraced dumbing everything down and claiming that everything needs to target technically illiterate people, while insisting that educating everyone was a bad idea. This is what we end up with: people who don’t understand enough to configure their own phones, and phones full of spyware under the control of consumer-hostile actors. The most worrying this is that this doesn’t just apply to the elder: it also applies to the newer generation.
- iguhhyfchh 7mo ago
  [dead]
tmtvl 7mo ago
I've been happy enough with my Ubuntu phone. Music works, I can send SMS messages and use the phone, timers and alarms work, and it takes pictures well enough. There's even a LibreWolf clone so I can see when my bus/train arrives.
robertandrewp 7mo ago
The .xlsx experience is even messier in a business context. I work daily across Windows and Mac, and my two worst offenders are Excel and QuickBooks. Excel on Mac has been closing the gap, but VBA macros from Windows colleagues still break regularly — sometimes silently, sometimes loudly. A workbook that runs perfectly on Windows will open on Mac and just do nothing, with no error. I've ended up keeping a Windows machine running purely because of macro-dependent spreadsheets. QuickBooks is the more frustrating one. Intuit has historically treated the Mac version as a feature-lagged port — payroll features, industry-specific reports, and bank reconciliation behaviour all differ between platforms. The company essentially wrote the same product twice and kept them deliberately out of sync. Muscle memory from one doesn't transfer to the other. The only partial escape I've found is pushing financial calculations out to platform-neutral layers entirely — whether that's a shared Google Sheet, a web-based tool, or an API. The moment the logic lives in a .xlsm file, you're platform-dependent again.
StacyRawls 7mo ago
[dead]

194 points by bariumbitmap 7mo ago

The article is about how setting up /Android/ phones is a nightmare. Contrasting it to my experience setting up iPhones is… dramatic.

DiabloD3 7mo ago
Yes, its a nightmare because Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do. Android phone manufacturers want $1200 for something that is a toy, just like the Apple iToys. Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Google needs to get out of the business and let the FOSS community handle it.
- latexr 7mo ago
  That type of rhetoric won’t get you what you want. Don’t dismiss something just because you don’t like it. iOS devices are not toys, and even if they were there is value in toys, and even if there weren’t it is provably false that “nobody wants those”. Furthermore, if Google dropped Android it is misguided to believe “the FOSS community” would handle it and everything would be roses. What you’d have then are a couple of hardware vendors (like Samsung) publishing their own forks and dozens of different incompatible open-source versions that would get no traction.
  - bigyabai 7mo ago
    > iOS devices are not toys iOS devices are. My iPad is the most useless piece of technology I own, calling it a "computer" is an insult to the actual computers I own. It's a toy, and not even a fun toy compared to my Nintendo Switch. Android handles serious workloads fine, macOS takes software seriously. iOS is the only operating system that treats gatchapon as the pinnacle of high-performance workloads.
    - bigyabai 7mo ago
      Hell, I'll double-down if you really disagree with me. ChromeOS, the operating system/spyware installed on e-waste like Chromebooks, has a more serious OS than iOS. It is more functional and capable, and undeniably the better professional OS. I say that with no love for ChromeOS. iOS exists in a class of it's own, functionality-wise. A class much closer to game consoles than anything resembling a computer.
      - latexr 7mo ago
        > Hell, I'll double-down if you really disagree with me. No wonder the world is in its current state, if when faced with disagreement the reaction is “I’ll plug my ears and dig my heels in deeper” instead of “I wonder if I’m missing something”. > ChromeOS (…) has a more serious OS than iOS. It is (…) the better professional OS. For starters, there are professionals (as in, people who get paid to do a job) who do their work on iOS. Not programmers, but writers, illustrators, animators, video editors, photographers, film makers… Maybe you can’t (or refuse to even try?) doing your work on an iOS device—I certainly choose not to—but that in no way means no one does. But all of that is irrelevant when you consider the very true fact of life that not everything is about work. Many people want something else, and not making all one’s computing decisions around work is healthy.
        bigyabai 7mo ago
        > there are professionals (as in, people who get paid to do a job) who do their work on iOS I don't doubt it. There are people who get paid to do their work on a web browser, if iOS wasn't capable of that it would be a travesty. The flexibility of iOS pales in comparison to the absolute worst desktop OSes, like Windows and ChromeOS. The DAW, IDE and NLE software on iOS outright cannot compete with the offerings on Windows, macOS and Linux. > Many people want something else, and not making all one’s computing decisions around work is healthy. You've conceded the original point, then. I can do "real work" with an Xbox, toy shovel or Lego bricks, but it's still a toy at the end of the day. The real tragedy is that iPad and iPhone hardware doesn't have to be limited by toyetic software. It's entirely Apple's choice to restrict my iPad from supporting WINE, having Linux containers and running actual IDEs that aren't arbitrarily gimped by distribution terms.
- mikestew 7mo ago
  Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Just because you don’t want it doesn’t mean <checks notes…> a billion or so people don’t want an iPhone. Or rather, a phone they don’t have to dick with straight out of the box. OTOH, I don’t really even know what you’re on about. Android is a nightmare because…it’s like iOS, which is “take phone out of box, restore from backup, sorted”? That doesn’t even make any sense, especially in light of what TFA describes.
  - mhitza 7mo ago
    For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice. Not a coherent or direct software+ecosystem choice. I've seen arguments around chosing iPhone for their camera. But the vast majority that is tech iliterate stops around that argument.
    - mikestew 7mo ago
      For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice. People in your area are very forthcoming. Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol. “Easy to use”, “it’s what my friends use, and they like it”, but never “it makes me appear higher in the social strata”. They might think it, and I’m sure some do, but it’s not said out loud. Or maybe that’s not why the majority buy iPhones, dunno.
      - mhitza 7mo ago
        My area is eastern europe. Where an iphone is like 3-4 minimum wage salaries or so. People take loans to buy iphones! And you could probably also correlate them with luxury item buyers, around here. Good thing the US message color thing is isolated over there and the peer pressure on Gen Alpha hasn't reached us. But yes, I stick to my claim. You don't have to hard press those people to tell you that they don't use phones "for poor people" . The idiom is local and used both ironically and literraly.
        mikestew 7mo ago
- fn-mote 7mo ago
  > Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do The article shows this is not true, if you know the similar process for iOS. The article could be compared to the iPhone setup process. There are some preferences to uncheck, but there is no third party spying software on an iPhone when it arrives. Contrast to Samsung.
butILoveLife 7mo ago
To be fair, they are doing with a Samsung phone, and Samsung is the Apple of Android (Big marketing budget, mid quality if we are being generous). Samsung as a company is a universal No Buy. The fact OP bought Samsung makes me raise an eyebrow. Credit to Apple where credit is due. When I unboxed my first iphone, I was happy to give Apple all my personal information, birthday, emails, ssn.... It was bizarre, I'm usually apprehensive to give this stuff away, but Apple made it fun. Within a few days, I was disappointed by a lack of widgets, slow transitions between screens, and a buggy podcast app. But the damage was done, my company was out $600 and Apple had my contact info.
- jeroenhd 7mo ago
  Samsung's UI and software behaviour may be shitty in general, but they're one of the few manufacturers reliably offering timely long-term security updates. When you go beyond Samsung, you quickly end up with brands promising "quarterly updates" or having months-long delays fixing CVEs. Plus, when they do something novel, they do it quite well. Their flagship phones have great price/performance if you buy them a month or two after launch (often for three quarters of the launch price + free earbuds/smartwatch + cashback), their software suite is quite complete and generally well-localised, and they have support channels non-English support channels available. I do wish they'd fix some of their terrible software design crimes and stop the endless race to the bottom shoving product placement into their apps, but it's hardly a no-buy to me.
  - microtonal 7mo ago
    Pixel is much cleaner and ships security updates monthly like clockwork. Plus you can install GrapheneOS and you get security updates multiple times per month, no AI nonsense and sandboxed Google Play Services if you need it.
Analemma_ 7mo ago
It's pick-your-poison. iPhone setup is eight hundred screens, half of which are upsells for Apple services, but at least it's only Apple services. Android setup, if you're not on a Pixel, is an invitation for the vendor's dozens of "partners" to all get your money and all your data.
jeroenhd 7mo ago
My personal experience is that the setup procedure wildly depends on the phone's vendor. The biggest difference between setting up a Pixel and an iPhone I experienced was that Google asked for certain settings beforehand that I had to turn off in the settings after setup on iOS. Both would've been a lot faster if I hadn't tried to disable optional account stuff. Contrast that to Samsung, especially their non-flagship models, where the setup wizard took forever because of the crap Samsung added to the process. That said, I do appreciate some "tutorial" parts of the setup process on Android. When I first set up an iPhone, I got the distinct impression that Apple assumed I already knew how to do everything. Their interface isn't exactly intuitive if you haven't used iOS before, no matter what online forums may claim. It took me several tries and a Google search to figure out how to remove apps, for instance. Perhaps one might find it an annoying extra step you're going to skip as a power user who's used to the platform, but it felt strange to be dropped into a strange, new operating environment with no instructions.
monooso 7mo ago
A Samsung phone. I've owned several (not Samsung) Android phones, and have never had to deal with such nonsense.
- dismalaf 7mo ago
  On Samsung phones you can skip making a Samsung account. All the Google bits still work and it's basically the same as having a Pixel, except you'll have a few unused apps, a different camera and phone app and a very slightly different UI.
  - morsch 7mo ago
    I had to guess arcane adb permission commands to stop a 2025 Samsung tablet from nagging the user about creating a Samsung account. It just kept showing up multiple times a day. But nice enough hardware with the promise of long updates at a reasonable price.
- ihaveazflip6 7mo ago
  Heck, I own a zflip 6 right now and the ONLY hard requirement out of everything in the article I gone through was the google account. And I know of a way to get rid of it too, it would just break a couple of things. I had mi phones before and they had only one hard requirement of needed a xiaomi account for developer mode. I circumvented it. The article isn't just a pathetic piece of writting in general, it's also operating on tip top tier redditor-brained US-defaultism where "Android = Pixel/Samsung". I have no idea why the crowd here is letting it stick around.
- clearleaf 7mo ago
  Samsung phones are the most bloated pieces of shit I have ever seen. Mine came with an app just to view the msn.com web site and it couldn't be uninstalled. You have google and samsung in a tug of war over every single thing the phone does. I thought my home button was breaking because of how unresponsive it was, but it turned out it just waits for a sequence to trigger such and such unwanted AI assistant or whatever the hell. It's a crapshoot whether you accidentally launch google assistant or bixby or some other crap service you never even heard of. There are touchwiz sound effects that I hear in public and to this day it sends a chill down my spine because it brings me back to so much miserable time spent with that abomination of electronics.
dismalaf 7mo ago
This article is a disaster. Beyond logging into your Google account nothing they described in the article is required to set up an Android phone.

iberator 7mo ago

It is not. Takes like 30 seconds

Pikamander2 7mo ago
If you want your brand new phone to be filled with adware apps and obnoxious default settings, sure.
- dismalaf 7mo ago
  Customizing it to your liking is different than "setting it up".
- hagbard_c 7mo ago
  You bought the wrong phone and/or put the wrong distribution on it. Having said this it does take more than 30 seconds to get a new device up to your personal specs unless you're fine with whatever vendor distribution runs on it - which can work if you choose the right vendor but mostly ends up with your device serving someone else. I'd say it takes closer to 30 minutes than 30 seconds but I'm fine with taking this time given that my average Android phone lifetime is a bit over 8 years. I'm currently using a Redmi Note 5 Pro from 2018 which I'll soon relegate to second device status once I have a replacement, probably a Motorola G75 or something similar. That device should also last me around 8 years. Before the Redmi I'm using now I used a Motorola Defy from 2010 which, incidentally, is still in use as a trailer camera. Android devices can last a very long time because the firmware is open. Eventually they'll be too slow or lack the memory to support more recent Android distributions - which is what made me replace the Defy with the Redmi - but that does not mean they end up taking space in a drawer somewhere. They're in use here as trailer camera, media player, 3D printer controller and more.

sonofhans 7mo ago

“Phones” in the title is doing lots of heavy lifting. “Android phones” is the key missing piece. I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business. The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.

jraph 7mo ago
A lot of the complains expressed in this article are distinctly from the proprietary parts. Stock Android, and especially stock Samsung, is far from being a free software solution. A turnkey solution based (almost exclusively, and except the driver blobs) on free software would be to buy a phone running something like /e/. I think they also provide backups. Of course, stuff requiring SafetyNet (or whatever Google current oppressive attestation system) may not work (though microG makes some of it work).
- microtonal 7mo ago
  I think they also provide backups Sort of. They use SeedVault, but a bunch of apps are not backed up. When restoring another set of apps do not properly restore
hagbard_c 7mo ago
What is it in your life which makes it 'impossible' to use free software, Google-free AOSP-derived Android distributions being part of this? I run close to exclusively free software and have done so for decades and have yet to feel the need to change this. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. I need to run proprietary applications for banking and electronic ID but those are the exceptions to the rule. My server runs only free software, on desktop I sometimes run an older version of Sketchup to start modelling things but that's the only non-free package I use there. We have children, a cat, a dog, 4 horses, a farm, a large forest, the works. We have multi-device backup and restore as well. Things work fine, using free software, not using 'the cloud'. Where are the sticking points for you and what would it take to take those away?

hollow-moe 7mo ago

I fear every single time I have to switch phones. Being degoogled means I first have to choose hardware based on custom ROMs compatibility, and fight the thing to just install the ROM. Then the fun begins, for every single stupid feature I have to install and setup a solution (app) optionally restoring a backup individually. Contacts, calendar, files, maps, passwords, airtag protection, email, IM, keyboard, weather, notes, smart garbage:tm:, alternative YouTube client...The state of current tech is pityful, if it wasn't what I was doing to put food on the table I wouldn't want any of this garbage 10 meters near me. Edit: Before any of the geniuses here says "at least you can use alternatives" I don't want to hear your copium, it's obvious this won't last.

nvartolomei 7mo ago

Upgraded to one of the latest iPhone recently. First time I clicked on “transfer data from old phone”. I’m used to reinstalling the operating system every couple of months from when I used Windows. It took maybe 15 minutes with close to 0 interactions. Everything was transferred. I was already authenticated in apps. What took manual steps was eSIM transfers. I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.

sentientslug 7mo ago
eSIM transfer also typically doesn’t require any intervention, usually it just goes across to the new device
- wtmt 7mo ago
  The key word here is “typically”. Transferring eSIM from one iPhone to another can be restricted by the carrier. Here in India, the second largest carrier (Airtel), does not support the native iOS eSIM transfer process. It’s a separate set of steps (the ones published on Airtel’s website won’t work, despite customer care claiming that it does). What works is almost like applying for a new or replacement eSIM.
  - microtonal 7mo ago
    Same here, KPN, NL. You have to install the KPN app on the new phone and log in. Then you request an eSIM on the new phone. You get an SMS auth code on the old phone. You fill the auth code on the new phone. Then you have to remove the eSIM from the old phone (with the new one not provisioned yet). Then confirm on the new phone and cross your fingers that provisioning works. Presumably (according to the docs) when it fails, you can reprovision the old phone again. The process made me so anxious the last few times, that I went to the carrier shop and asked for a nano SIM. Now life is bliss again. It seems that eSIM is primarily an advantage when you need to get a new SIM, but other than that I don't really see much of an advantage for me as a customer.

deejaaymac 7mo ago

If you use android and don't choose GrapheneOS then idk what to tell you, its been an awesome experience with no issues for the last ~5ish years I've used it.

microtonal 7mo ago
Yep, no cloud storage upsells, no pushy AI crap, just a fast barebones smartphone and you can pick what you want on top.
drittich 7mo ago
Tell me why they only support Google Pixel phones, v6 through 10.
- hollerith 7mo ago
  Those are the only phones that meet their stringent requirements. They have been talking to a manufacturer with the goal of getting a non-Pixel phone on the market that meets the requirements.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 7mo ago
    That's Motorola
71bw 7mo ago
Can't use my bank.

dismalaf 7mo ago

This is literally the midwit meme... Here's how you actually set up an Android phone: - log into Google account - select a few checkboxes (basically just if you want to restore apps or not) - done, everything else is automatic All the fuckery they decided to do because they think they're tech savvy wasn't required.

urbandw311er 7mo ago
You don’t sound very tech savvy yourself to be honest! Well, certainly not security conscious or in anyway concerned about data privacy.
- dismalaf 7mo ago
  You thinking anything OP did improves security or data privacy proves the midwit meme...

lnrd 7mo ago

Giving an Android phone to elderly/non-technical people is asking for trouble imho. They will eventually tap their way into installing suspicious apps, adware or even straight up malware. It's inevitable, they are not aware of what they do and how to avoid the many risks of the digital world. I remember having the same struggles of OP when setting up a cheap android phone for my grandma, the amount of bloat, adware and misleading content I had to remove was incredible (and some couldn't even be removed). The irony was that after a few months of light usage, the phone was in a state even worse, full of downloaded apps and opened suspicious websites in the browser. She would swear she never even noticed any of those. This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.

microtonal 7mo ago
FYI: you can also set up parental controls on Android. Parental control is a also a hot buggy mess on iOS currently. Our daughter has an iPhone with parental control set up and a bunch of apps that are whitelisted regularly refuse to start at random moments (blocked by parental controls). We hoped that iOS 26 would finally fix it, but nope. It doesn't really matter, both phone ecosystems are a mess, but in different ways.
rationalist 7mo ago
My mother can no longer do the stuff she used to on her iOS phone because it is so complicated compared to the iPhone 4 I gave her a long time ago. I screen her emails with her consent, very easy to do with Fastmail that imports her Yahoo mail into a folder she doesn't see and then I move okay emails to her inbox.
- SuzyM 7mo ago
  Have you tried Assistive Access mode? https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphone/devcd5016d31/ios https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
  - 7mo ago

1970-01-01 7mo ago

Setting up enshittified devices is the nightmare. Don't curse out on all phones because they made a poor purchase decision. You're literally buying it wrong. Next time go with a slightly used device that's fully supported by GrapheneOS and marvel at the frictionless setup.

ray_v 7mo ago

Is it not clear that's it's just the well-known phenomenon, "enshittification" at play? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

juancn 7mo ago

iPhones are basically effort free, it takes a while, but 99% of it is transferred without a hitch, some poorly written apps may need an extra step.

freitasm 7mo ago

Another thing that annoys me on Android is the setup experience itself. All my recent device presentcthe same behaviour: login with a Google account, transfer data, setup voice assistant and some other defaults,done. Then after the first app updates is done, a notification comes with "let's finish setting up your phone" and again asks to setup voice assistant, check defaults and whatever else is in the flow. Has no one noticed that the setup flow seems to run twice? And it's not one specific device. I do it with eight to ten devices a year, from different OEM, writing reviews and testing. They all have the same behaviour.

freitasm 7mo ago
Another annoying thing: very few apps are copied from old device to new devices and bring their settings and most importantly login. Of about 80 apps on my device, only five or so are ready to use after a migration. Going through dozens of apps, doing logins, 2FAcand changing settings is a PITA. Devs do a poor job on that front.
- jeroenhd 7mo ago
  Developers basically need to opt out not to use that feature. 2FA apps do that for understandable reasons (including on iOS). In my experience just about everything but WhatsApp and maybe Signal work out of the box for apps downloaded through GPlay.
kirenida 7mo ago
I noticed that as well, I thought it was just a bug or a conflict because I used Smart Switch instead of a "built-in" Android tool.
breisa 7mo ago
Isn't that just Google trying to dark-pattern you into finally clicking that checkboxes you unchecked during setup?

Animats 7mo ago

I'm dreading having to buy a new rugged Android phone. I have one where all the stuff I don't want is turned off. F-Droid, Firefox, FairEmail, DuckDuckGo, no Google account. Getting a new phone into that configuration may not be possible. The major brands are more and more locked down, and the minor brands can't be trusted. I have a Cat phone now. The actual manufacturer, Bullett, went bankrupt. Can't get the small rubber parts needed to maintain the waterproofing. Suggestions?

Gander5739 7mo ago
You could get a pixel and flash grapheneos. Most stock roms will require google services.
- gib444 7mo ago
  Pixels are far from rugged

teekert 7mo ago

Sounds like setting up Windows. The amount of explaining of “why you don't want or need that” was insane. I got Ubuntu down to 10 min or so. Including my fav apps. (I won’t make the comparison to setting up NicOS with a ready to go config ;))

hkbuilds 7mo ago

The worst part is that it keeps getting harder, not easier. Every new phone setup asks you to connect more accounts, enable more permissions, and configure more services. I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours. Between 2FA migrations, app re-authentication, and trying to figure out which backup actually had their data, it was miserable. Phone manufacturers have zero incentive to make cross-platform migration easy. Apple wants you to stay on iPhone. Google wants you to stay on Android. The user suffers.

suzzer99 7mo ago
> I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours I give a silent thanks every day that my dad still has a flip phone and no desire to upgrade.

lsc4719 7mo ago

Why don't use `smartswitch` built-in feature of Samsung phones?

hvenev 7mo ago

I personally call this process of setting up a new device, whether for me or for someone else, "shit shoveling". It is something of a ritual. In the former case the thing that needs to be removed is the entirety of the OS (and if that proves to be impossible, the device is returned or discarded), and in the latter it's a scan of all apps and removal of all unnecessary apps, my grandma does not need Samsung Galaxy Games, thank you very much.

MagicMoonlight 7mo ago

“I bought terrible Google slopware and struggled with it” Insightful stuff. Adults buy iPhones.

71bw 7mo ago
Adults do not waste their time arguing about the "superiority" of one platform - based on subjective choices - online.

bossyTeacher 7mo ago

Vivaldi over Firefox. I would love to hear the reasoning.

layman51 7mo ago
Same here! I'm assuming it has more to do with the mobile app experience than anything else.

user3939382 7mo ago

I do SIP and Asterisk. I read the title and was like I know right! Oh smartphones. Setting it up is the tip of an iceberg whereas consumers and society as a whole are pay huge prices in several currencies for phones which are tremendously over engineered for and not fit for, purpose. The entire stack from Von Veumann to 5G has to go.

dredmorbius 7mo ago
Care to detail (or point to details of) your setup?

timedude 7mo ago

None of those problems exist on GrapheneOS. In fact i regularly do a clean wipe and am up and running again in minutes.

mid-kid 7mo ago
How do you back up and restore things without root? I've found that even with root, these days many backups are useless thanks to using hardware-backed encryption...
- gib444 7mo ago
  (not OP but been on Grapheneos for a couple of years). I don't. I transfer any important data like photos to a real computer weekly Mail, Calendar and Contacts are handled by IMAP and DavX. Passwords are in 1Password I have minimal apps so setting up a new device wouldn't be too much trouble
- timedude 7mo ago
  There are various options, but if you use syncthing, it is as easy as creating a share on your PC or backup machine and on the phone. Everything gets synced automatically.
  - gib444 7mo ago
    > Everything gets synced automatically That's not true though, is it? "Everything" kind of implies an iPhone-style backup. You can't do that without root AIUI Maybe you can give us more details about how you achieve a full up-and-running restore "in minutes"? I run GrapheneOS so very interested. (Syncthing for Android is deprecated, too)
    - timedude 7mo ago
      Well everything you chose to sync gets synced. Like photos, documents etc. You can also set up apps in such a way where they make automatic local backups on your phone in the folder that gets synced. There are multiple android apps for syncthing

pooper 7mo ago

For those on iPhones or respectable mobile network operators, not everyone has as good of an experience as you do. For people who buy subsidized Android-based phones from some carriers such as Metro by T-Mobile USA, they either come with bloatware baked in or they download the bloatware when you first activate the device or something like that. These things are fairly easy to disable if you know what you are doing but if you don't know what you are doing, I can imagine people will simply put up with ads showing up every time you pick up the phone. It can get annoying VERY quickly.

spaqin 7mo ago

It used to be better. I've been running Android custom ROMs since Gingerbread days, on HTC HD2. At that time, I'd be flashing nightlies, switching between CyanogenMod and Paranoid Android, kernels, getting bootloops. Setting up the phone was no big deal - most apps could be backed up with Titanium Backup, few that couldn't (e.g. banking) would just get redownloaded and I'd log in immediately. I was also still a student back then and had more time to tinker, but if it was anything like it is now, I would've given up much quicker. In the last year I had to do few clean flashes with changing my phone, then updating LineageOS, and once the phone just wiped itself for no reason. Backups don't work for most apps - even if you can get one, they'll crash without a specific reason. 2FA everywhere is mostly security theater, with apps that have no business keeping my data but insisting on it, using SMS, email, authenticators, selfies. Banking apps needing two layers of root detection circumvention (because a custom ROM is already problematic, so you need root to stop them from detecting an unlocked bootloader, and then again not to detect root). Google insisting on sending a security check notification to a phone that's just been wiped with no ability to confirm that it's really you from your PC (but if you give it few minutes, it will give in and let you verify with SMS), always feels like hacking yourself. It's a massive pain already on a clean, bloatware-free custom ROM, with a truly minimum app list. Once you need to start debloating the official OS, it's another hour or three, depending if they're nice and let you uninstall things or if you need adb access to disable offending packages.

ssl-3 7mo ago
I found that TiBackup was both the secret sauce that allowed for playing with ROMs with impunity, and also my primary reason for rooting phones back in the day even when I was just using phones in stock form. It was the first app I ever spent money on, and I did so without any hesitation at all. It was just genuinely useful to be able to back up and restore my own data on my own devices, and to do so on my own accord. It was a process that I owned, and controlled, and if it went wrong somehow then I was able to troubleshoot it and make sensible decisions. I haven't had a rooted phone in a decade or so now. These days, backups allegedly happen -- somehow -- and the entire process seems to be both deliberately and inscrutably shrouded in mystery. When I switch devices or reset to factory to try to fix an eSIM issue (or whatever I do that makes restoration a useful path today), then it's never clear before I start whether the backup/restore will magically work or if it will simply fail without recourse. The uncertainty demonstrates a reprehensibly terrible way to deal with backups.

pibaker 7mo ago

I am an iPhone user myself, but the number of "this is an android problem" and "just use iPhone" in response to the author's complaints surprises me. I thought HN was more anti apple in the past? Maybe we are all old now and tinkering with our devices is out of fashion, but this doesn't make the author's complaints illegitimate. And if we zoom out a bit, iPhones are only 20% of the global phone market. The overwhelming majority of the world uses android because, well, iPhones are expensive. There are plenty of places where an iPhone is still a status symbol. Even you think the author should have bought his parents iPhones instead, there is still a whole world of people out there who would benefit from improvements in the android ecosystem.

kwanbix 7mo ago
I don't use Android because iPhones are more expensive. In fact you can get Android phones that are as expensive and sometimes more expensive than iPhones. I use Android phones because it is a much more flexible ecosystem, where I can choose my browser, for example.
- krick 7mo ago
  Exactly what I was going to say. I don't use iPhone because, well, it's iPhone. And until, like, this year, it was strictly more prohibitive than Android. Also, it was honestly just worse of a device than some Android flagships, and the tradeoff is only worth it if you are a lazy USA-ian, who doesn't use any "sketchier" non-mainstream apps, has an Apple account and owns a bunch of Apple devices anyway. Oh, and all your friends use iPhone Messages app. Then iPhone is the default. But outside of USA it was always more of a gimmick than a natural choice. That being said, even if you wouldn't have said it before me, I probably shouldn't have said it too anyway, because I suspect that globally speaking the GP is right. Most people don't buy flagships, yet everybody has a phone. And Apple doesn't even try to compete in "non-premium" market, it's strictly impossible to buy a new iPhone for the price of some Redmi or whatever, which isn't even noticeably worse than an iPhone, practically speaking.
  - daliusd 7mo ago

jeffbee 7mo ago

If you think this setup process is a drag, imagine what a pain in the neck it is to try to use your phone after your paranoid son has fucked it all up like this.

jazzyjackson 7mo ago

Get a Sonim XP3+ It's an android (11) flip phone but without Google store and without touchscreen, so almost nothing works on it There's no setup, besides disabling the PTT button and making it open the application of your choice (as long as your choice is Clock, Voice Memo, or Music/FM Radio) The ability to slam the phone shut to hang up, and call via speed dial without opening the "phone" app more than makes up for the lack of Instagram. If you want a chatbot put 1800CHATGPT on your speed dial

ddtaylor 7mo ago
Seems like it will cause me to get stuck at an airport or train station while an employee tells me about the virtues of an app.
- jazzyjackson 7mo ago
  This is a possibility, but so far the only public place I've found lacking any paper backup has been ticketmaster music venues And malls that replaced their maps/hours with QR codes but this seems to be a California thing so can be avoided by not being Californian

Normal_gaussian 7mo ago

I'm in the UK. I use a pixel, but also have iPhones and iPads for work reasons. My wife has a Samsung, my mother a Motorola etc. I set up phones several times a year. What the author describes is not a problem if you go "all in" on your manufacturer. iOS or Android. If you tick the cloud sync functions you can restore apps and copy data with a two or three step wizard. If you pay for the cloud storage level, you will have enough space for your photos etc. it's really a non event. But if you don't go all in with your manufacturer. E.g you consider Google an untrustworthy custodian of your photos, or decide you'll stick with the free iCloud account etc. You're in for a world of tiny pains.

krick 7mo ago
Honestly, I would say that even in the latter case the painfulness of the process is a bit overstated. Sure, it's not great. But if you treat it just as a new device and don't expect to just continue from where you've left it on the previous phone, you'll make it under 30 minutes anyway. Half of it is playing with the UI of the new version of the OS and getting annoyed at the fact that the apps are not the same anyway, because on the previous device you refused to update an app after they fucked up it's UI, and now you must to get an old apk which won't even work anyway on the brand new Androip v99 or whatever.

drnick1 7mo ago

The best phone experience, by far, if you hate bloat and spyware is GrapheneOS on a Pixel. No accounts, no logins, no restrictions on side loading, and most Android apps that aren't affected by the Play Integrity cancer just work. You can even install Google apps if you want, but my preference is to use FOSS apps only.

krick 7mo ago
Surely, it depends on your particular vendors, but don't you have any problems with banking apps and such? I honestly just don't know, didn't try messing with firmware in a while. Do you use Revolut or something similar?
- mannanj 7mo ago
  I have found websites for accessing my banking to be pretty great. Do we really need banking apps?
  - hrimfaxi 7mo ago
    This doesn't answer the question though. If someone says "how do I have safe sex" you don't suggest abstinence.
    - mannanj 7mo ago
      his question was "Dont you have any problems with banking apps?" and I answered indirectly that I don't use them. Maybe you just are fixating on only particular answers being acceptable.
  - azuanrb 7mo ago
    In my country, we do. For starters, we use apps for authentication and notifications. We can debate whether web push is viable, but most banking apps simply do not rely on it. As for older people, I would rather they use an app than a website because it is far too easy to fall victim to phishing attacks, no matter how much we educate them.

rl3 7mo ago

https://github.com/mobile-nixos/mobile-nixos https://github.com/mobile-nixos/mobile-nixos TIL this exists. Here's hoping we see some type of NixOS + Graphene mashup one day.

TheRoque 7mo ago

Somehow, I recently migrated phones, and I don't find it a "nightmare". Was fairly straightforward. Xiaomi Redmi to S25+.

raincole 7mo ago

Just like always, average Android phone users get the worst of both worlds. Android is supposed to be the freer option, but in reality only very tech savvy users are enjoying the freedom (and they install custom ROMs anyway).

kirenida 7mo ago

Regarding users creating new accounts on phone setup: Recently I encountered a user that had created a new Google account when switching to a new device... on their last 5 devices. So when they switched to the latest one and called me to set up the phone, I had to wrangle the contacts, photos, cloud storage and whatnot from all of those accounts. Another pain point for me (in the EU/Balkans) is the transfer of Whatsapp and Viber. For reasons unknown, the accounts, contacts, chats, downloaded data can't be transferred during device setup. The only way to transfer data to a new device is to create a cloud backup on the old phone, which requires creating a wapp/viber account and setting up the google drive backup (local backup to a file? lol no. Any other cloud service available? lol no). Of course, when dealing with a media-heavy user (lots of photos, lots of memes/videos from group chats that are automatically downloaded to the phone), often is the case that the cloud storage tied to the google account doesn't have enough space for the backups, because it is filled with the automatic google photos backup that nobody turns off. And the user usually doesn't want to pay for extra space on Google because they don't understand why or just plainly don't want to. So yeah, the transfer process is slow and complicated and full of traps, but it also offers an insight in to how much the imaginary "average consumer" doesn't care about this stuff and just agrees to everything offered.

yonatan8070 7mo ago
WhatsApp can do a local backup to /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp I have that set up, and Nextcloud syncs the folder to my server
- tsaika 7mo ago
  Yes, but WhatsApp is very finiky about restoring that backup when you're setting up a new device. Due to this, I've resorted to backing up to drive without any media and then after restore, sync the media back via other means. It's also worth mentioning that when you sync with drive, it doesn't preserve the time stamps of devices
  - eMPee584 7mo ago
    As usual, root and sshfs make this all a lot more bearable. Alas, no online-banking or digital health insurance services, lol.

gib444 7mo ago

iPhones are nice but all that iCloud data is a privacy nightmare especially without Advanced Data Protection, which the UK Gov caused Apple to stop offering in the UK (and I can see that extending to the E U). Friction can be good in life. Good food takes effort etc. When it comes to phones, there is the issue of privacy, security and phone addiction. When the mobile is hard to use (eg Grapheneos - no offence), it can force you to use a real computing device for most of your needs

Tzk 7mo ago

What I hate the most about setting up new devices up is apple MDM on our company-managed devices combined with data transfer via iTunes backup. Here’s why: 1. The devices will offer to transfer data wirelessly, but won’t tell you that some data isn’t transferred. Instead using iTunes is a must as (in our case) more data is copied. This excludes data from managed apps - understandable. 2. When updating and recovering the backup on the new device is done, the regular setup experience starts. But, as your WiFi is also copied over, the device starts trying to update and install apps in the background, even before you logged into your Apple ID. So you’re constantly annoyed by popups asking for the ID. If you try to enter it, another pop up will interrupt amd stop you from entering the credentials. It even aborts touch/face ID setup and makes you start over again. I’ve had some colleagues starting over on Touch ID for like 5 times before they were faster than the popups. That mixes with popups for company accounts like mail credentials. And even a required change of the unlock password. Sometimes up to 10 different popups spawn in a few seconds… Seriously, why? Is it that hard to stop these prompts till the setup is done and then prompt the user for everything needed once?

Surac 7mo ago

Years ago i bought a Device because i wanted to use it. It had cool features or provided a benefit to me. Today if i buy a device (just any device) i decide which Device will be the lease anoying one. Often this ends in not buying a device and use a old but reliant way of doing things.

Frostline 7mo ago

Hack

deng 7mo ago

Transferring to a new Android phone without depending on Google cloud is a total nightmare. It doesn't help that there's a ton of outdated information in the net on how to do that. You can see it in this very thread: lots of people saying "do a local Whatsapp backup, transfer the backup manually": this USED to work but does NOT anymore. There is a decryption key in /data/data/com.whatsapp, which of course you can only access on rooted phones (maybe there's a way to approve the transfer when the old phone is still working, not sure). To the best of my knowledge, it is basically impossible to fully transfer applications locally to new phones without root access. The ONLY reliable way to transfer to a new phone: - root your phone - get NeoBackup (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.backup/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.backup/) and grant superuser permission to it - do a FULL backup of the apps you want to transfer, that means it must also include "device protected data" - restore apps on your new phone If you'd like regular backups of apps: create scheduled backup with NeoBackup to a local folder and sync them with whatever tool you want to external storage. Good luck with that, you'll need it.

WhyNotHugo 7mo ago

We’ve had decades during which we could have educated more and more people on how use tech. Instead, the industry embraced dumbing everything down and claiming that everything needs to target technically illiterate people, while insisting that educating everyone was a bad idea. This is what we end up with: people who don’t understand enough to configure their own phones, and phones full of spyware under the control of consumer-hostile actors. The most worrying this is that this doesn’t just apply to the elder: it also applies to the newer generation.

iguhhyfchh 7mo ago
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tmtvl 7mo ago

I've been happy enough with my Ubuntu phone. Music works, I can send SMS messages and use the phone, timers and alarms work, and it takes pictures well enough. There's even a LibreWolf clone so I can see when my bus/train arrives.

robertandrewp 7mo ago

The .xlsx experience is even messier in a business context. I work daily across Windows and Mac, and my two worst offenders are Excel and QuickBooks. Excel on Mac has been closing the gap, but VBA macros from Windows colleagues still break regularly — sometimes silently, sometimes loudly. A workbook that runs perfectly on Windows will open on Mac and just do nothing, with no error. I've ended up keeping a Windows machine running purely because of macro-dependent spreadsheets. QuickBooks is the more frustrating one. Intuit has historically treated the Mac version as a feature-lagged port — payroll features, industry-specific reports, and bank reconciliation behaviour all differ between platforms. The company essentially wrote the same product twice and kept them deliberately out of sync. Muscle memory from one doesn't transfer to the other. The only partial escape I've found is pushing financial calculations out to platform-neutral layers entirely — whether that's a shared Google Sheet, a web-based tool, or an API. The moment the logic lives in a .xlsm file, you're platform-dependent again.

StacyRawls 7mo ago

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