[Siddarth1977]

Maybe try... a good Android phone?

This question is silly. The Pixel or any top-end Samsung is equivalent or better than the iPhone in hardware. The Android and iOS user interfaces are similar enough that it's mostly personal preference and familiarity.

[dustedcodes]

I had the Pixel 1-3 and personally I switched back to an iPhone because after the Pixel 1 every new iteration got increasingly worse. My wife is still on a Pixel 4 and it will land in the bin very soon too.

[shawabawa3]

I've had Pixel 1, 3 and 5 and my experience was they got better every time

[Volundr]

I'm still on my Pixel 3. It's even been through the washing machine.

[izacus]

Yeah, Samsung has been doing an amazing job innovating with foldable phones which are sharply rising in sales (despite commanding prices higher than Apple phones).

[voisin]

Can you quantify this sharp rise? I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic.

[izacus]

They've more than doubled shipments every year for each successive generation. Which is impressive for phones that are more expensive than iPhones.

[scarface74]

For the first two years until Google and Samsung stop updating it.

[_-david-_]

Both Google and Samsung have extended the support. I don't think it is at the same number of years as Apple though.

[scarface74]

Wow 3 whole years

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en

[Volundr]

From your link:

> Pixel 6 and later phones will get updates for at least 5 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US.

[scarface74]

3 years for operating system updates from the time they first appear in the store. The iPhone 6s from 2015 ran the latest OS until September of this year. The iPhone 5s from 2013 just got a security update this past June.

On top of that, it depends on where you bought the device

> If you bought your device elsewhere, updates can take longer

Apple users get updates regardless of whether you bought the device from an Apple Store.

[fazfq]

I don't even have to try it, I was looking at Samsung phones recently and they were laggy and came with so much bloatware - they even had a built-in propaganda app regarding the UN Global Goals, it left me flabbergasted.

[jonathanyc]

OP, this reply to your question ought to give you some insight: many people simply can't tell the difference.

And if you can't tell the difference, you certainly won't budget resources towards making Apple-quality products. Then you'll spend years wondering why Apple has such ridiculous profit margins before coming to the erroneous conclusion that it must just be everyone else that's wrong.

[smoldesu]

Uhh... Apple goes to every length to make sure people know the difference. You don't buy a smartphone, you buy an iPhone. Your phone doesn't have a punch-hole camera, it has a Dynamic Island. They market every product like it's a Disney amusement park ride and throw product announcement festivals, everyone knows there's a difference. Apple's job is convincing customers that they're special for enjoying Rich Corinthian Leather or lickable UI elements.

Apple has huge profit margins because their software margins are literally larger than their hardware ones. If you're familiar with the history of Microsoft/Google products, that should be a big flashing light telling you to leave ASAP.

[pwinnski]

Apple goes to great lengths to make their case, absolutely. And yet still, even leaving aside your comment which seems to attribute the perception of difference to marketing rather than actual quality, still we get this response: "This question is silly. The Pixel or any top-end Samsung is equivalent or better than the iPhone in hardware."

The poster clearly believes what they are saying, despite other commenters pointing out the counter-evidence for the statement.

So GP is right: many people simply can't tell the difference, despite Apple's best efforts.

[1123581321]

He's saying that user Siddarth1977 thinks Samsung is as good or better at interface design, when it clearly isn't. People who use uglier or less well integrated devices are used to it, and when they see something better designed, it reads as a subjective difference to them, or possibly objectively worse.

Whereas you are talking about how Apple's current customers perceive their devices. And you're absolutely right. Apple sells phones to a lot of people who don't have good taste, and it works hard to persuade them that Apple==tasteful so they don't get confused and wander off.

I'm artistically useless myself, to be clear. I'm not immune to marketing where my lack of taste leaves a preference vacuum.

[Siddarth1977]

This is a weird take. I can certainly tell all sorts of differences between Apple and non-Apple products.

A short list of the major things that I think set Apple-quality apart: Zero effort towards backward-compatibility or longevity, just force users to buy new hardware constantly. Actively hostile towards hardware interoperability, just force users to buy adapters. Actively hostile towards independently developed software and interoperability, just steal ideas to incorporate into an apple-owned product or use marketing to convince your users they're superior for being locked into your platform. Don't bother to make software that works for diverse users, just use marketing to convince users that flexibility and functionality are inferior to whatever the Cupertino designers decree is the one right way to do things

Apple isn't a technology company, they're a fashion company. They can sell an iPhone for huge premiums for the same reason that Chanel can sell a purse for $10,000. It's not a product-quality question, it's a brand-quality question.

[mcphage]

> Zero effort towards backward-compatibility or longevity, just force users to buy new hardware constantly.

Is that why you can install iOS 16 (the most recent version) on an iPhone 8 from 2017?

[calciphus]

It's why you can't install the same app that worked on your iPhone 8 when you bought it, today. It's the reason you can't install one that worked two years ago unless the developer is constantly keeping up with Apple's mercurial and inscrutable os-level API changes. Apple breaks APIs regularly and you're left hoping a dev wants to do free work to keep it working for people who already bought it.

Edit: clarity

[such12]

> Zero effort towards backward-compatibility or longevity, just force users to buy new hardware constantly.

This can't be taken seriously as a comment given that iPhones are typically supported with software upgrades for twice as long as Android phones.

[srk_hn]

This is a lie that often gets repeated over and over, but I have firsthand anecdotal experience of how this is not true. My mother has no formal education and when she was given an Android she struggled to do basic things. Once she got an iPhone it was night and day and an entire world was opened to her and she was able to use and discover her phone with almost no handholding.

That has still not changed with the latest Android updates. Yes the home screen might look "similar" but once you get past that first surface layer interaction, to people like her the Android system and UX design language are a mishmash of incoherent ideas and visions whereas on an Apple device things work as she would intuitively expect consistently regardless of the app she's using or what she's trying to do with her phone.

[smoldesu]

You're moving the goalpost of quality, which is arguably why this entire thread is such a loaded question that will never be adequately answered. Everyone has different definitions of quality, and both of us could tell anecdotes about people loving/hating iOS/Android until our lips bleed. Overall, the best we can do as a society is acknowledge the different things each product gets right and petition the respective companies to do better. There is no "lie" here, just a difference of perspective.

[kcplate]

> My mother has no formal education and when she was given an Android she struggled to do basic things.

My mother is 84, she has an android phone that after 3 years still cannot manage to do anything other than make and answer calls. She hates it. Six months ago I gave her my old iPad Pro. Spent an hour showing her the basics and now she zooms with her Bible study group, manages her email, browses the internet, FaceTimes her grandkids, watches streaming, listens to music. She loves it. She asked me recently if iPhones were similarly easy to use, a let her use an old 8 we had. She’s getting an iPhone in a couple months once her phone plan is due for an upgrade.

What I think people need to realize, despite the power in smartphones nowadays, they are consumer level devices and with a consumer level device, you need to make it usable for the lowest common denominator users (like my mom). This is where android fails as compared to iOS IMO. A walled garden sometimes is a good thing.

[malermeister]

Counterpoint: The way that every single screen on iOS has a separate "back" button you need to look for vs just having it unified by the OS is an incredibly frustrating UX.

[tdeck]

I'm not sure why someone downvoted this. Every time I use a friend's iPhone I find this frustrating. Like anything else it's something you get used to either way, but "back" is such a common action that it makes sense to have a unified way to do it.

[wildmanx]

> This is a lie

Please check out what the word "lie" means and until then stop using the word.

Hint: The post you replied to did not claim something of which they know that it's not true.