[deregulateMed]

I went the other way. I got an iPhone in 2016 and was shocked at how poor the quality of hardware, os, and software was. Admittedly opening the box and giving Apple my personal information was fun.

Maybe it was a bad time for Apple, but it was almost traumatic for me. They really did just use marketing to sell phones.

[onethought]

Which iPhone was 2016 and what was the quality issue of the hardware, os and software?

Consistently Apple have been the leaders in all of the above. Even now, superior chip, camera, battery life, pixel density... it's hard to find better.

I've used Pixels since they became a thing and Apple iPhones. Other than quirky App Store bugs the quality issues almost always occur on the Pixel phones. ("Ok google" just stopping, gestures just stopping, ringing phone not responding to touch etc).

[deregulateMed]

Hardware might be related to software. The swiping from screen to screen was slow. I posted about this and people said to turn off animations. Annoyingly this was not straightforward and it didn't solve the problem. Not to mention having a unique charger meant an extra device to pack on trips.

The os annoyance was the relentless "type in your apple id password", and multiple times per week updates. A few users have spun the narrative that updates are good, but these were annoying and didn't have any front facing benefits. No widgets really sucked, it was regressive not to have my next alarm time on my home screen.

Finally Apple maps sucked, the podcast app was buggy, I'd hit play and nothing would happen. I'd then hit play a few times and nothing would happen. Then finally something would happen. I can't remember other software bugs, it's been years.

Sure these might be fixed today, but I wonder what other things are bad today. I have ad blocking and a few other non play store apps on my phone, given the App Store, I'm not sure Apple would let such apps through.