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Comment by pjerem | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. The mobile OS market is just not open and big enough to vote with my money.

I don’t buy iPhones because I like being unable to side load apps. I miss it a lot.

The point is that when I make my list of pros and cons of buying Android vs iOS, I still prefer iOS because, as much as I dislike Apple commercial policies and artificial lock-ins, I just loathe Google for what they are.

And don’t even call me some sort of "fanboy", I’ve used and loved Android as an OS since basically the first versions.

It’s just that iOS have a quantity of advantages I’m not willing to lose by going back to Android and that there are basically no alternative platform to run apps on.

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iOS have a quantity of advantages I’m not willing to lose by going back

What are these?

Putting aesthetics aside, iOS has a better app ecosystem and part of that is driven by Apple hardware (including having fewer devices to support) and software advantages. For example, I’ve read that the iOS audio stack has lower latency. If you like GarageBand, then you aren’t going to want to go back to Androi because there’s nothing as good.

The integration with Apple desktop computers is pretty compelling as well. It’s part of the reason I wish Microsoft would buy Android from Google. I think they would do something similar for the rest of us.

I recently got an iPhone and I still don't understand the integration bit. If you don't use iMessage (everyone here uses Messenger, Telegram or Signal), barely make phone calls, use OneDrive for cloud storage (because it's way cheaper than iCloud), and use BitWarden for passwords there isn't really anything left. I guess being able to AirDrop a file is nice? But then also my Macbook and my iPhone have different chargers so from a hardware PoV they're less integrated. Is there anything I'm missing here?

Lots of users (especially in the US) do the things you don't do. They use iCloud, talk on the phone, and use Keychain and iMessage. They use Safari on both platforms and the features that let you send stuff back and forth easily. If they have an iPad some even use Sidecar which lets you use the iPad from your Mac.

Oh yeah, I use SideCar all the time but that's not an iPhone feature. And I get that people in the US use iMessage a lot but I don't see the value proposition of an iPhone if most of your contacts use Androids, even if you've gone fully Apple. Safari integration is nothing special (heck, Brave can do almost the same syncing without an account), OneDrive and Google Photos do just as good of a job as iCloud in my experience, and there are so many better alternatives to Keychain. The only truly handy integration between my MacBook and iPhone is being able to automatically switch which device my Airpods are connected to but even that is sometimes buggy.

Sorry for the analogy but this reminds me joke about the guy who replaced all ingredients in recipe and then said: "I do not get what is so special about this food".

I don’t need to argue about this. Those are my personal preferences and that was not my point.

My whole point was that you are limited to only two platforms. So choosing one doesn’t mean that you accept all of its disadvantages.

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