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by thewebguyd 230 days ago
> I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users

Yes. The point of willingly putting yourself in the walled garden was that the experience was definitively better than the other options.

When the walled garden ceases to be better and starts adopting all the same dark patterns and user hostile experience as everyone else, what point is there in staying inside?
1 comments
qwerpy 230 days ago
The hardware is still marginally better but the experience is no longer better. In fact with android at least you can sideload and install full powered ad blockers. At some point once the iOS experience degrades beyond a certain threshold, android will be a more attractive option.
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int_19h 229 days ago
From the perspective of a casual user, on Android you get mobile Chrome which doesn't do extensions at all, while on iOS mobile Safari has extensions including ad blockers.
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qwerpy 227 days ago
On Android you can get Firefox with its own rendering engine which can run full uBlock Origin. On iOS sure you can get some ad blockers on Safari but not the full powered uBlock Origin. Or you can get Firefox but it's just a reskinned Safari and can't run the powerful ad blockers.
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int_19h 225 days ago
Casual users don't care about rendering engines. They care about things working or not working, and in practice Safari with AdGuard is "good enough".
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qwerpy 224 days ago
I agree, what I said should not have conflated "rendering engine" with "ability to install fully powered ad blockers". What I meant by that was that Safari's renderer on iOS doesn't allow the full uBlock Origin no matter if you use a reskin of it or not (firefox, brave, etc.), but if Firefox and its rendering engine were allowed on iOS (similar to how it is on android) we would have the full power ad blocker.

It makes a difference. I have uBlock Origin lite on my iPhone and it misses ads on Facebook that uBlock Origin on my PC blocks. Facebook has the most advanced anti-ad-blocker tech, so they're a good benchmark for how effective an ad blocker is.

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