The New York Times‘ Brian X. Chen switched from an iPhone to an Android phone last week to see how things would go. By Day 6 he was back to his trusty iPhone.
Brian X. Chen for The New York Times:
At first, I was happy with my choice — I had upgraded to a fancy Google Pixel phone. But by Day 6, I was ready to switch back.
A bunch of annoyances added up. Even though I could still use most of my Apple products, I started missing my Apple Watch, which requires an iPhone to fully work. For software, I was able to find Android alternatives for all my favorite apps — except for Notes. While switching phones wasn’t technically hard, Apple’s hooks were still in me…
My experience isn’t universal. Some people would care more than others about how certain Apple products would change if they switched phones. Younger people would probably care a lot about lacking iMessage in schools, where a green bubble has been known to be an invitation for mockery and exclusion, according to education experts. Parents who use AirTags to track their children would view losing access to those as a deal breaker.
The upshot from this experiment is that while it’s not technically hard to switch to a different phone, there are plenty of things that could make you regret it.
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MacDailyNews Take: If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.
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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I had the first ever Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and was Android all the way until 2020 when I was sitting on the couch with my GF during lockdown. I had heard Google was up to some shady stuff, and I said to my GF, “I thinking about breaking up with Google.” The Google Assistant on my Pixel 3a, which was in my pocket, said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Got an iPhone the next day and haven’t looked back. Hurt my brain for awhile, even though I’d used Macs for years at work, but I would never think of returning to the evil Googleverse.
Better 13 years late than never!
Dude, this is an obvious piece of collusion by the Nazi Times (the ny times died a long time ago) and the totally nazi DoJ to help bolster their bogus antitrust case.
Further, it’s not complementary of the phone at all, just, wahhhh, they got my hooks in me, wahhhh, but everything is worse on the iPhone, waaaahhhhh, nazi daddy govt save me, wahhhhh.
Dont take it as flattery. Take it as a setup, because that’s what it is. A thinly veiled collusive setup.
That evil Apple!
They got their hooks in me – by making better hardware and software!
Fucking criminals!
“Loyalty” to Apple is predicated on it being “insanely unpleasant” to switch because of various walled-garden, lock-in gimmicks. 1-1 their hardware is better than the competition but iPhones have become stale and boring, others are at least giving us folding phones and mobile-desktop hybrids like with Samsung’s DEX. Aside from all of the bad news and crazy failure to develop in-house AI, Apple needs to breathe fresh life into its core products and software. How does Pages and Numbers stack up to MS Word and Excel lately? An F-ing joke!
Pages and Numbers work excellently for me, and I never use, nor ever again use, Word or Excel, nor will I pay rent for said Gatesware. But I am in business for myself and do not need to kiss some corporate’s ass and use that stuff. In one case, I sent over some Pages documents and told the company to find a Mac user or don’t come to me again.
Keynote is really the unsung hero of the office suite from Apple. It is significantly better than MS Powerpoint. Yet PPT rules the world. Keynote’s quirks take a bit of getting used to if you’re a long time PPT user. (I started with PPT before it was a MS product, and they even shipped a hardbound manual with it back then.) However, if you’re a Mac user, you’re not coordinating in building a presentation with a herd of MS Windows users, and you’re putting up your own presentations, Keynote is definitely worth using.
The repeated use of the word “hooks” (including in the subhed) makes it seem like there are nefarious barbs that Apple embeds to ensure you can’t leave. But in reality, all of the “hooks” were just features or cross-product integrations that make it more enjoyable to use an iPhone. Does Apple need to make its Apple Watch compatible with Android phones, or can it focus its energies on making it work great with iPhones? I guess we should ask Samsung, which pulled iOS support for its smartwatches a few years ago.
anyone who is in the iCult with all iThingies will/should not like Android or other OSs
Apple has cleverly made it hard to coexist with other OSs
I was an original member of the iCult but got tired to the more expensive hardware and closed software systems