My alternative is to use smartphone only in exceptional use cases, as banking apps or emergency calls.
For calls use simplest phone available.
Actual phone calls are the best user experience.
Emotionally fair and transparent. You don't have to write thousand emojis to express emotion.
You don't wait someone to respond or ignore. Things are direct and effective.
On the app side of things. There is no app that I need and I don't have on my laptop.
4G LTE Mifi with VPN. Intel core 2 duo / PureOS (removed ME).
I am fan of big and powerful desktops and multi-monitor setups.
Recently I discovered my dream desktop computer: https://shorturl.at/apqP3https://shorturl.at/ceB06
If I want a photo, I have a small camera. If I know I will shoot, I grab my Leica.
It is all about the information diet.
I want my mind to be clear and my perceptions sharp.
Smartphone UX and small screens in general are not the best way to consume information.
iPad was cool middle ground solution, but I cannot trust Apple or any closed source software anymore.
And neither of them are feature complete with Pine phone either which is the reason for this thread :-)
Actually owning your own phone to the point of deciding yourself what runs on it and what does not and being able to repair it easily are two huge features when you start to think about it.
Unfortunately, if you ask the average user whether they want detailed control of what runs on their phone or a Facebook app, they're going to go for the Facebook app.
Most users don't have any utility in detailed control. They don't even know what to do with it.
> Most users don't have any utility in detailed control. They don't even know what to do with it.
Can I chime in and say that:
- Surprisingly many are getting uncomfortable with the current situation.
- If this had been our collective conclusion 20 years ago we wouldn't be sitting here working on blazingly fast Linux dev machines running dirt cheap servers in vast clouds, we would have been stuck with Windows (and probably an inferior version to Windows 10, since without competition there's less pressure to perform)
I'll be getting rid of my Android device once the PinePhone is back in stock. I only ever use my phone for SMS, calls and maybe a flashlight here and there, so it should be a pretty comfortable transition.
A lot of people have reached the point of needing an iPhone. Nope, Android won't do, because it's not an iPhone. Too much friction and learning curve to ever use anything else than an iPhone. Game over.
Idiocy where people ridicule you for not having iMessage (and its features) because you have an Android phone and someone sends you messages on iMessage, it shows up as green for them, which creates a sense of inferiority in their eyes. (Android doesn't support iMessage unless you use something like AirMessage which requires a Mac, and iMessage to iMessage shows messages sent in blue, but SMS to iMessage, which is what Android users can use, shows a green message when iMessage users send messages).
It is a clever marketing ploy where Apple users make Android users feel bad for using a product because the colour of their messages is different.
Anecdotally (and randomly), I've seen "the blue bubble" can put additional pressure on males to get iPhones since "women use iPhones more, so I don't stand a chance if I have the green bubble."
I hate iMessage. Because of the blue bubble phenomenon, there are a lot of people in the US with iPhones just out of the need (pressure) to use iMessage. iPhones are ridiculously popular with American teenagers (probably over 90% usage in rich areas) and I've heard it isn't necessarily about iPhones being better. No, it is literally about iMessage and winning the social approval of their peers.
Since they have iMessage, suddenly you need to too. And so on.
I don't believe marketing or features or whatnot is what makes the iPhone popular. No, it is the crushing social pressure of iMessage.
After this ridiculous FaceTime bug [1] in 2019, I've disabled FaceTime permanently. Now, hackers are using zero-click exploits on iMessaging by crafting malformed images/pdfs thereby breaking the media notification parser, breaking out of the sandbox, breaking out of BlastDoor, hooking into the Springboard.app which has entitlements that grant access to everything on an iOS device. Jeff Bezos and Joshua Wong have experienced first hand how broken iPhone's security is.
I have an iPhone and iPad, and recently have been experiencing phantom rings. My iPhone/iPad would ring simultaneously for half a second and then flash "Unknown Audio" (instead of "Unknown Caller" or the caller ID). And, for phone calls, there's supposed to be a green phone icon, but these calls have blue phone icons. And the notifications don't stay in the notification screen. They're gone after the ring. I can't tell whether my phone's on the fritz or my data is being exfiltrated. Last weekend, I received 3 phantom calls in a span of 5 minutes. My phone can't be trusted for FaceTime calls and iMessages. Fucking irony.
We cannot grant absolute trust to any one entity. Do not fully trust Apple. Do not fully trust Google. Do not fully trust not your government. Granting them absolute trust grants them absolute power that can be corrupted against you absolutely. Even though Google is a privacy invasive company, at least Google doesn't have power over Android to the extent that Apple has power over iOS. Android users can still side-load the Navalny app because Google built this weakness into their system. Apple's complete authoritarian power over iOS means users don't have power to choose. Prefer to use apps/services like Signal that cannot kowtow to authoritarian regimes because these kinds of apps/services have little power that they can themselves abuse.
But actually, fuck apps, fuck serfdom. Prefer the open web. Prefer distributed systems. Self host.
My wife and I actually experience something similar that had a real impact on our social life's. Android and group iMessage do not play nice. The groups get "sharded" for seemly no reason. As a result, our friends stop added us to group messages and we were no longer in the loop for social gathering and "causal banter".
One of those instances where if I had an iphone, I actually think I would have developed closer relationship in the group. It's very off-putting to think about the impact of brand choice.
Truly, what kind of emotionally insecure absurdity would you have to be shamefully allowing into your mind to give the least shit about the color of your message texts and your phone type? I can't imagine taking seriously anyone who shames me for something so vapid. Why even bother hating iMessage and etc? Why not just.... Not give a shit either way? In a very young girl or boy it's just maaaaybe slightly understandable (until a bit of good parenting intervenes to put it into perspective for the silliness it is) but for any functional adult? Ridiculous.