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US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

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Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#431

Post by eduction »

kube-system wrote: post #359
ok123456 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.

General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it do…

Your comment has nothing to do with what you’re replying to. He’s explaining (at someone else’s request) his own consumer choices. He can make his choices and the people you’re talking about can make their choices.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#432

Post by SapporoChris »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #363
zh3 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their income on Apple products; it's almost like their lives are ruled by the status they feel an iPhone brings (and the consequential sacrificial purchasing). It likely varies by area and average income, here it's almost an inverse correlation - the less-well off kids at school tend to have parents on iPhones and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for t…

iPhones just work. Macs just work. 99% of people don’t want to spend time configuring anything. Both iOS and Android stopped innovating like 5 years ago, but at least the Apple ecosystem doesn’t feel dead like Android.

From a sim card set of instructions that I was working with today: For iPhone customers: Please install APN after inserting sim card. Open the following website with Safari-Browser: *.*.com.

That isn't just working. It looks like iPhone users have an extra configuration step when using this particular sim card.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#433

Post by kube-system »

phpisthebest wrote: post #418
kube-system wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time is valuable, and the ecosystem of Android phones is filled with time-wasting BS: bloatware, OEM specific UIs, varying device quality, lack of OEM support, confusing accessory compatibility, a marketplace full of malware, etc. For the type of people here that like to tinker with tech this might be a non-issue, but some other people just want to use the device to accomplish tasks with as little friction as possibl…

>>lack of OEM support what does this even mean in this context? >bloatware, OEM specific UIs The problem here is calling in "ecosystem of Android", it is mainly Andriod vs Samsung. You are either in the Samsung Ecosystem (i.e Samsung UI) or in the Andriod world, Most of the other vendors, the few there are, run close to stock Andriod these days. Then of-course there is Pixel's Pure Android. Not really all that confus…

> >>lack of OEM support

> what does this even mean in this context?

The OEM doesn't have a store in the mall that will help an elderly family member with it. The OEM stops publishing updates after the phone leaves the shelf. etc.

> Most of the other vendors, the few there are, run close to stock Andriod these days.

Which is a gigantic pain in the butt when you're trying to talk your mother through the settings menu over the phone to change one setting, and the OEM decided that was the one feature they wanted to move/rename/omit/customize.

> if you can not figure it out then I trust your better served by iPhone.... you likely have also given up on computers completely as windows or linux is far too complicated for you.

> Yes, user freedom bad, must only have applications that Mr Tim approves.

That's the thing, it shouldn't take someone like me to use a phone. Phones are mass market devices that children, elderly, disabled, and uneducated people use.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#434

Post by GeekyBear »

inversetelecine wrote: post #310
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a major factor that is driving market share towards iPhone. Few people outside of the tech nerd bubble care about this.

Yes. I'd argue most people hate or are annoyed by updates. "Ugh, another update??" I hear this all the time. Or "X company updated my phone and everything is different, I hate updates!"

I'd argue that Google wouldn't keep gaslighting users about how it's fixed the update issue "for sure this year" if they didn't know that users care about updates.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#435

Post by kube-system »

eduction wrote: post #431
kube-system wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General purpose computing is a concept that computer scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy products based on their cost/benefit of their features and overall experience, not ideology of their technical construction. You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the dishes or it do…

Your comment has nothing to do with what you’re replying to. He’s explaining (at someone else’s request) his own consumer choices. He can make his choices and the people you’re talking about can make their choices.

And I can point out that I think that opinion is just as silly as resenting my dishwasher for lacking a JTAG port on the front panel. iPhone's aren't Stallman's college mainframe. They are consumer products.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#436

Post by Tagbert »

abenga wrote: post #303
MildRant wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers. It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.

Isn't it going the other way?

Not really. They are bringing features out on all of their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down the way that a phone is.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#437

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #354
121789 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i worked a little in this space in the past. what we learned was that most people don't switch, but if they do, it's overwhelmingly in the android->ios direction and not the other way around (this is in the US). you may see some anecdotal evidence otherwise but on aggregate that was true

Anecdotal support for you claim: gave my dad and his wife two of my older iPhones to replace their Android phones. They'll never look back now. He told me he assumed the fawning over iPhones was "hype", now says he believes it is not.

You don't, however, mention which Android phones they switched from.

Android obviously has a huge variety of different phone manufacturers, and many of them really suck, and many more are just mediocre. I think it would be harder to argue that iPhones are now (or in the past 5 years or so) significantly better than a Samsung or Pixel flagship.

I personally own a Pixel and my spouse owns an iPhone, and besides the familiarity there are many features I love more about my phone (particularly the call screening and other call automation features). The biggest downside, which may unfortunately actually cause me to have to switch to an iPhone at some point, is Apple's monopolistic behavior with iMessage: I'm often the "odd man out" in group chats and the presence of my Android breaks the experience for me and all the other iPhone users in the group (video quality is in the toilet, messages can randomly get dropped, emoji reactions suck, etc.)

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#438

Post by willio58 »

sb057 wrote: post #223

I'm part of this statistic. I've been an Android user my entire adult life, but it really has been a constant downward spiral over these past several years. My previous three phones from LG, Motorola, and Xiaomi all had major software bugs that were never fixed, the biggest being just incredibly poor network connectivity (across multiple carriers, mind you) resulting in at least several calls just not connecting to m…

> I resent that my money went to a company like Apple

When comparing Apple to a companies like LG, Motorola, and Xiaomi, what do you find to be worse about Apple? Genuine question.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#439

Post by Tagbert »

meepmorp wrote: post #409
echelon wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General purpose computing was the default from 1990 - 2010. Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and "platforms". And now Google is killing the web. Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows no bounds.

Yeah, it's true, you can't buy a general purpose computing device from Apple anymore. Apart from the Mac.

What could you buy before, apart from the Mac?

Perhaps we need a definition of GPC?

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#440

Post by pyrophane »

collinc777 wrote: post #94

In the US, having an Android is one of the biggest social status negative signals I can think of. I used to have an android and when I'd meet people the primary thing they'd remember about me was that I had an android. Their blinders were up after they had that information. I think phones like the Galaxy line might be better than iPhones, but the experience of owning an iPhone far exceeds owning a Galaxy.

Apple really contributed to this with the non-iMessage "green bubble."
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