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by cowtools 1382 days ago
Android would more useful and intuitive because it has an actual file-system, and the android phones generally come with replaceable storage. This has been my personal experience using an iphone myself and helping my family with their iphones. I think apple purposefully increases camera resolution, prevents upgradable storage, and charges much more for increased storage, all in an effort to upsell users to their "iCloud" network storage service.

My experience with the iOS store is that it is mostly crap. I go to look for a pdf editor, the first three options that come up are a "free download" trying to get me to to sign up for an overpriced subscription service to use the app. The Android store is also garbage, but there is at least f-droid which is good.

The idea that iOS is somehow made more secure through the locked-down App Store and firmware is a prototypical case of security-by-obscurity. It has been trivial for law enforcement and other motivated groups to bypass iOS security measures. Operational Security is not some collection of marketable "features" or "solutions" that can be bought, it is a holistic mindset towards reducing risk and severity of cyber-attack. When you outsource the security of the device to a single all-powerful company, that is not good opsec. The find-my-iphone network is an example of this: is is an inescapable global surveillance network. to me, this reflects poorly on apple's security and privacy practices. The apple "ecosystem" is designed in a way to encourage the use of proprietary software such that apple can extract a fraction of sales revenue through their store.

Apple is a very profitable company because they are good at inventing new reasons to charge their customers more. I don't think the price of the product reflects its underlying usefulness, intuitiveness or security.

That being said, most android OEMs do ship a quite bloated, non-standard verison of android- this is analogous to PC OEMs that will install bloatware on any windows laptop they sell. This reflects quite poorly on the android ecosystem: the OEMs like samsung that most associate with "high-quality" smartphones are paradoxically the crappiest OEMs when it comes to software.

2 comments

You mean when you search in the Play Store you always get highly relevant applications. Come one. The Play Store is a mess which you noted. Your attempt to discount the App Store is just you being ignorant and ill informed.

It is not trivial to bypass iOS security. People may be inattentive to best practices but nobody is going to crack a new iPhone with USB security and a long password.

Find My is opt in. Don't use it if you don't wish.

Sure iOS software is proprietary but Android software is what? That nonsense tells me you have noting to contribute.

> intuitive because it has an actual file-system

I disagree with this. Most non-tech people don’t know or care about file systems. As long as they have the sharing options they need and find them easier to use, they’re satisfied. FWIW, iOS/iPadOS has a Files app that exposes part of the file system.