[dumbo-octopus]

I personally have never once seen evidence that he "prefers" Android in any capacity. He has voiced opinions on things Android does well, and he has done the same for iOS. Anyone who thinks he has a personal preference one way or the other is very likely projecting.

[al_borland]

He carries both, because he needs to stay familiar with both, and there are some things that the iPhone does better (in his opinion), like video, and of course there is iMessage.

He has said countless times that his main phone, and primary number, is on whatever Android phone he is currently carrying.

I’m an iPhone user, so I’m not projecting, trying say he prefers my preferred platform.

Here he is talking about using 2 phones, with his main number and 75% of usage being on the Android. That seems like a preference to me. That doesn’t mean he thinks the iPhone is bad, but it’s his special purpose phone, not the ‘default for everything else’ phone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QGbfOd_pVvc

[dumbo-octopus]

My work happens to require my primary computer to be a Windows machine, and there are many functions Windows provides that the Mac equivalent cannot compete with, when it comes to the work I need to do. Does that mean I "prefer" Windows? I don't think so.

[al_borland]

You work for someone else, he works for himself. He can do what he wants, you can’t. Apples and oranges.

[dumbo-octopus]

He still has to provide a service to his "customers", and must do what it takes to accomplish that. Obviously, he could not choose to not make videos and still have a job, even if that was 'what he wants'.

To that end, if the Android operating system is better suited for the business needs he has as a video creator, he would be incentivized to choose that platform even if it isn't what he "prefers" all else being equal.

Not that I particularly care about this topic... good day.

[nolongerthere]

At one point he tried making an iPhone his main phone and gave up after 2 weeks because he couldn’t figure out how to use shortcuts. He made a whole video about it.

[dumbo-octopus]

I hate iOS shortcuts as well, I think they're one of the worst designed features on the phone and they have put some idiot PM's definition of "safety" as a direct obstacle to every user experience with them imaginable. I could see how if my job required them I might use android. But I don't think we could take that data point and extrapolate out that I "prefer" android.

[al_borland]

It seems every time Apple tries to makes some kind of automation tool for the every-man it’s difficult to figure out for people who know how to write actual code, because none of the normal conventions are there. I ran into this with Automator as well as Shortcuts.

I don’t care enough about Shortcuts to get good at it, but would probably use it more if the learning curve wasn’t so steep. It seems odd to me that I need to put more effort into learning Shortcuts than a programming language.

[dumbo-octopus]

It's not that it's difficult to set up, it's that they actively put restrictions in place to completely hamstring the usability. The only shortcut I have is a geofence to automatically text my GF when I am near her house so I don't need to use my phone when I'm driving and I don't need to wait out front for an excessive amount of time. But get this: you can't actually make a shortcut that runs on a geofence, the best you can do is get notified when you're in the target area, at which point you must manually unlock your phone and trigger the event.

It has to be some boneheaded attempt at "Privacy", to that end they also force you to accept a notification saying that there are N shortcuts running on the phone Every. Single. Time. you restart your phone.

They destroy everyone's UX (and force a non-0 number of folks to unnecessarily use their phone when driving) in order to kinda-sorta-maybe prevent some corner case where a stalker had access to your phone and wants to notify themselves whenever you're around a specific location? Except they could just enable the always-on location sharing feature to get precise location data at every moment?

It boggles the mind.

[ProfessorLayton]

To be fair, the Shortcuts app is a hot mess. Not only is the UX trash, it can't to basic things like trigger Siri.

[nolongerthere]

but to be fair the ability to schedule texts and messages in other apps is fantastic and much better than android which still doesn't have a native orchestration tool that apps can build against.

[ProfessorLayton]

I'll also add that Shortcuts can do a lot of really cool stuff, but one major problem I've found is that sometimes it just... doesn't work. Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason for why the same shortcut fails one time, but works another (Nothing complicated either, just launching an app). No explanation other than the failed error message.

[nolongerthere]

This was a bigger problem in earlier versions of iOS, I've found them to be a lot more reliable lately, I have a shortcut that takes a sms reminder and converts it into a calendar event, (bec that healthcare provider EMS doesn't support sending calendar invite emails) back on iOS15 it would work intermittently, but ever since iOS17 it's been rock solid.