How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

The massive market share is because of cheap phones. The average selling price of an Android phone is a 3rd of an iPhone.

And where is this “massive innovation” that is leading to profit either by app makers making apps that can only be made on Android or by device makers? As the old saying goes - “if they are so smart, why aren’t they rich?” The whole Android ecosystem is a race to the unprofitable bottom.

The same can be said about Windows PC makers - thin margins and low profits. Not exactly what I would consider a “success”.

There was a period of time where you couldn't have custom keyboards on iOS. There was a period of time where 3rd party apps on iOS couldn't even multitask.

And when Apple did it, it did it more securely. You can’t just press a confirmation button, the user has to be purposeful and go into settings, the keyboard runs out of process, and even then by default the keyboard doesn’t have network access. The user has to go out of their way to go back into settings to give the keyboard network access and they get a huge warning. Also, when you enter a password, it changes back to the system keyboard.

As far as multitasking, again Apple was more thoughtful and limited multitasking in iOS 4 to not allow a third party app to drain the battery. Even now that they have opened it up more, the user can still granularly control what apps are allowed to run in the background.

There is huge difference between the thoughtfulness of how Apple implements features and how Google implements features.

“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it”.

The cheap phones are because Google allows 3rd-party OEMs to install Android on their own devices, even though that carries an extra risk of having an outdated phone, or a 3rd-party back door, or just a crappy experience that degrades the overall Android brand. It's the exact same thing we're talking about -- Apple doesn't do that because they think giving random device makers that much control is insecure and hurts their brand. It doesn't mean that Apple's approach is wrong. But I'm glad that both exist.

> And when Apple did it, it did it more securely.

This isn't an iOS vs Android contest. It doesn't matter who has the better implementation.

Apple started from a perspective of "You don't need multitasking." Consumers widely said, "Yeah, we do. Those phones have it and we want it." Apple said, "fine, but we'll do it our way." Everybody won, because some people went out and did the experimental hacky thing, and Apple looked at them and said, "you know what, it has issues, but I guess that is worth supporting."

> And where is this “massive innovation” that is leading to profit either by app makers making apps that can only be made on Android or by device makers?

Innovation != profit. Otherwise, Open Source communities would be a lot richer. My metrics for user success are not primarily based on corporate profit margins, but the short answer to why people aren't getting rich on Android is because the app market as a whole on both iOS and Android is a race to the bottom. It just so happens that Android's bottom is slightly lower than Apple's is.

There certainly are apps on Android that can't exist on iOS though, if that's what you're getting at. Off the top of my head, the iOS equivalents of Tasker are way underpowered next to what's being offered on Android. 3rd-party non-Gecko web browsers still aren't supported on iOS, which actually does matter because the iOS browser engine is lagging on multiple web standards. Look backwards a little ways, and you have the swipe keyboard style, which started out as a 3rd-party app on Android and (I suspect) was a big part of Apple deciding to back-down on their 3rd-party keyboard restrictions. Go back even farther and you had 3rd-party tethering apps. On the OEM side, there are people who still swear by the Note series, and Apple seems pretty adamant that they're not interested in pursuing phone styluses. They're probably not gonna ever break on that, but I am about 65-75% sure that within 5-7 years Apple's gonna break down on touchscreen laptops; I feel like the convertible market is going to eventually be too big for them to ignore.

One big thing for me personally is that I use a file manager on Android to handle syncing -- I basically treat my phone like a USB drive. A really nice part of that is it's all web-based. I don't have anything installed on my computer, I can boot up essentially a local server from my phone and drag videos/music into or out of any app's data storage from any computer with a web browser. Even from other phones :)

Again, this doesn't mean that Android is better than iOS. It means iOS and Android serve different niches. If you like the iOS niche, that's great. Some people genuinely like the Android niche; they're not just buying Google phones because they're poor. The high-end Pixel phones sell.

In a thread about how Facebook invades users’ privacy because of lax security controls on Android, it does matter that one method of allowing third party keyboards is “secure” and the other isn’t.

Innovation != profit. Otherwise, Open Source communities would be a lot richer. This is like saying, "well if newspapers have such good reporting, why aren't they making money?" Because the app market as a whole on both iOS and Android is a race to the bottom. It just so happens that Android's bottom is slightly lower than Apple's is.

One of the posts in this thread was talking about “entrepreneurship” a Nd business opportunities that can’t exist because of Apple’s policy. If that were true, you should see a blossoming of business opportunities that exist on Android.

Go back even farther and you had 3rd-party tethering apps.

Tethering restrictions was the one thing that Apple did to cowtow to phone providers. Why would Apple care about third party tethering otherwise?

One big thing for me personally is that I use a file manager on Android to handle syncing -- I basically treat my phone like a USB drive. A really nice part of that is it's all web-based. I don't have anything installed on my computer, I can boot up essentially a local server from my phone and drag videos/music into or out of any app's data storage from any computer with a web browser. Even from other phones :

There are plenty of apps that do that with the iPhone. But, all of the cloud storage apps have web interfaces that you can copy files to and from.

The high-end Pixel phones sell.

Barely....

Estimates are that Google sells about 4 million phones in a year - the same number Apple sells in a week.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007104/google-pixel-tot...

And if Andy Rubin can’t convince people to buy high end Android phones - the Essentisl phone - who can?