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Setting up phones is a nightmare

joelchrono.xyz

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Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#51

Post by xigoi »

skybrian wrote: post #50
lnrd wrote: post #24

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 a…

But I thought sideloading wasn't a real problem and Google is just locking it down because they're evil :-)

“Sideloading” does not play a role in this. All of the crapware is on Google Play.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#52

Post by bigyabai »

latexr wrote: post #49
bigyabai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 thei…

> 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.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#53

Post by mhitza »

mikestew wrote: post #46
mhitza wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#54

Post by bdangubic »

mikestew wrote: post #46
mhitza wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

iPhone is a status symbol is more places than it is “normal” to pay $1k+ for a phone (this is yearly or less salary in most of the world). gotta come down from the ivory tower

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#55

Post by SuzyM »

rationalist wrote: post #45
lnrd wrote: post #24

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 a…

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.

Have you tried Assistive Access mode? https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#56

Post by jeroenhd »

nvartolomei wrote: post #15

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…

Google has APIs to do the same. In fact, it works on most apps. The biggest exceptions are security sensitive apps (2FA, password managers) and WhatsApp for some stupid reason. If you're a HN Android user who turns off any form of data sharing like me, you wouldn't notice, though, as this requires the "back up my data" checkbox during setup of the old and new phone to work conpletely.

Another issue on Android is that iOS allows for syncing data through the user's iCloud, which can be gigabytes in size, but Google has you use the Google Drive API which sucks and involves handing over credit card info.

The Android file transfer has another trick that Apple doesn't seem to do, which is fully offline local sync rather than going through the cloud. This has reliability issues and requires both devices to stay on and nearby while the transfer is in progress, but on slower internet connections the process can be a heck of a lot faster thanks to modern wifi speeds.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#57

Post by jeroenhd »

freitasm wrote: post #48
freitasm wrote: post #47

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 o…

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.

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.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#58

Post by adamsmark »

sonofhans wrote: post #8

“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…

iOS now has a ton of dialogs and set up steps and the occasional dark pattern in selling you various cloud based subscriptions to Apples various services.

Having said all that, yes Android is pretty bad. I think it's the in the nature of platform owners to get their hooks into yoh as much as possible.

When I set up Linux Mint, there was none of this.

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#59

Post by Animats »

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?

Re: Setting up phones is a nightmare

#60

Post by metalman »

sonofhans wrote: post #8

“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…

a big chunk of apples valuation is that they can just tell you to bend over the day they decide to aquire half a trillion dollars, fire half there workers, and demonstrate the creative way there user agreaments are bieng interpereted, and that you can get a trump phone if you dont like it. this is the company that has signed an exclusive deal to provide phones for the ZGF, zionist genocide force, so dont even bother, ok?
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