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Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

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Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even get the files on the iPhone? I see long blog posts discussing the steps needed for this. Not really "just works" is it?

I type in the URL shown in the VLC app on my computer and drag and drop files to it, when I am connected to same network of course. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html > A media library, with WiFi Uploads & Downloads, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive & Box.com integration and optional passcode lock. >Web Interface for easy uploads and downloads to/from device.

But how do you "sync" music libraries with the phone storage? Dragging and dropping files is still not a great experience and doesn't scale.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#112
post #7

I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&T ran the promotion to get a free one. I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in subst…

> The fact that the iPhone “just works” is worth it to me.

While I’m firmly entrenched in the iPhone/iPad ecosystem, nowadays there’s quite a lot of little things that don’t “just work”, but instead behave (or are designed) in quirky and inconsistent ways, or fail randomly. I’m not talking about third-party apps, but iOS functionality and essential built-in apps. I can only imagine it’s worse on Android.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#113
post #7

I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&T ran the promotion to get a free one. I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in subst…

From my experience if you stay on the Google flagship/Pixel line then everything is great. Pretty much every other vender is garbage and will screw you and you'll have the experience you're talking about.

Thoughts on Sony?

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#114
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run ad/content blockers on iOS, I watched my wife use safari the other day and was shocked at how much irritating content/ads she deals with so I installed the same one for her, works a treat.

Which blockers do you use?

AdGuard Pro and 1Blocker

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#115
post #7

I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&T ran the promotion to get a free one. I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in subst…

Question about that: What I personally do most on my phone is browsing the web (when not at home, at home I can do that with a regular computer). On Android I can use Firefox with plugins to block ads, kill overlays, etc... and especially it has the reader mode AFAIK on iPhone you can only run one Apple-approved browser and all others are a skin around that, and it doesn't have plugins. To me browsing the web is unus…

I do desperately miss this. I’ve tried hard to get as good an experience as possible, but there’s no denying that Android wins on this one. The total closed garden approach of Apple is way overkill and I dislike it.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? In what world can’t I use FLAC files on my iPhone? VLC does it great, I use them almost literally every day…

How do you even get the files on the iPhone? I see long blog posts discussing the steps needed for this. Not really "just works" is it?

[deleted]

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#117
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you're talking about. I have zero issues using my FLAC files from elsewhere on my iPhone.

How do you play it? How do you import them into your library? If it's not mp3, aac, or m4a, iTunes won't index it, it won't end up in your library, and any of the standard music apps will not play it. Speaking from experience because this is a continuing pain point for my music collection that includes oddball formats like flac, ogg, and others--none of which I can even get on my phone without using a cloud service.

I use VLC, which works great.

I don't use iTunes, ever, anywhere; and I feel sorry for anyone who does.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#118
post #50

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Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform. Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android. Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser. I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.

There doesn't seem to be. Hell BB10 was basically what you describe and IIRC had a layer to let let devs submit Android apps into the Blackberry World from day one. It wasn't enough and devs couldn't even be bothered to do that. Later they partnered with Amazon and added the Amazon App Store and let users add their own Android apps. Still wasn't enough. It was a great phone OS and hands down was the best at email/mes…

You can probably make the case for it being a triopoly today had Microsoft done some things differently. But that's different from saying that Microsoft could realistically start down the mobile phone path again today. You can be sure if they thought they had any realistic hope of making it, they would try.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#119
I was so committed to android since my very first smartphone. I liked that it was a more open platform and that it was a bit more of a tinkerer's phone. I recently got an iPhone SE for just too good of a price and thought, "why not". The moment I started to really use the phone, I felt like a complete fool. Android was always a buggy, stuttery mess. Apple is miles ahead. The phone and OS is incredibly polished. everything fades into the background and it just works in a pleasant and perfect way. Android

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does having root on your phone improve for you?

I use a custom ROM on my Pixel phone to strip out all the user-hostile tracking. It works quite well honestly, no major usability sacrifices

Would the tracker blocking available on iOS at the OS level mostly suffice for this?
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