[summm]

Microwaves are a bad example. The cheaper ones are white labels basically all made in the same factory in China. The customer has no way to know if the slightly more expensive one is actually more durable or, much more likely, just the same, but generates more profit for the intermediaries. In this situation it is wiser to get the cheaper one.

[Arainach]

Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that to their life. They have a significantly easier time understanding an error message that says "because your device has an unlocked bootloader, you can't use the <name of bank> app"

[AnthonyMouse]

> Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that to their life.

This is the sort of thing anyone can look up on the internet before buying one.

The reason that doesn't work for white label microwaves is that the manufacturers don't want it to. The off brands exist so they can make sales to people who prioritize price, and they purposely change the company name every month so no one can find a review of the off brand and the same company can sell the same microwave with a higher margin to other people who will pay more for the name brand.

Whereas when your company makes a phone with better privacy etc., you want everybody to know that so they buy your phone instead of a competitor's.

> They have a significantly easier time understanding an error message that says "because your device has an unlocked bootloader, you can't use the <name of bank> app"

Indeed, it immediately lets them know that their bank sucks and they need a better one. (It's actually a pretty decent red flag that your bank has a cargo cult security team.)

[Arainach]

> This is obviously false. It's the sort of thing anyone can look up on the internet before buying one.

It's not something that's quantifiable, and it's easily manipulable. The iPhone(tm) has a twelth-generation quantum superconducting wonderflonium chip that enables (pile of technobabble garbage) and "privacy".

This Motorola thing has (pile of technobabble garbage) and "privacy".

Consumers don't understand and they don't care. Even the ones with technologically savvy friends don't want the hassle, they want something that works.

How has 30 years of "Microsoft is anti-consumer and <pile of complaints>, you should use Linux" worked out for consumer market share?

> Indeed, it immediately lets them know that their bank sucks and they need a better one.

If you think even 0.1% of consumers would switch banks to buy some new phone, this conversation is not worth continuing as you and I don't live in the same reality.

[AnthonyMouse]

> It's not something that's quantifiable, and it's easily manipulable. The iPhone(tm) has a twelth-generation quantum superconducting wonderflonium chip that enables (pile of technobabble garbage) and "privacy".

That's the marketing noise from the company itself. Then you go to Reddit or similar and ask technically competent people what they recommend.

> Even the ones with technologically savvy friends don't want the hassle, they want something that works.

The phone that supports open operating systems is the one that's less of a hassle. It doesn't go out of support even though there's nothing wrong with it, it isn't full of spyware and weird bugs because people can actually fix them when the OEM doesn't, it has a working ad blocker etc.

> How has 30 years of "Microsoft is anti-consumer and <pile of complaints>, you should use Linux" worked out for consumer market share?

Windows market share was >90%, now it's 67% and still falling. And that's just desktops; Microsoft was completely abandoned in the mobile market because they were so widely hated. By most accounts Windows Phone was actually decent but being from the notorious company whose OS nobody uses unless they're locked in was a death sentence.

> If you think even 0.1% of consumers would switch banks to buy some new phone, this conversation is not worth continuing as you and I don't live in the same reality.

You're not switching banks to buy a new phone, you're switching banks because when you bought a new phone it made you realize that your bank sucks. Which annoyed you enough to spend five minutes checking out other banks, at which point you realized there are credit unions that not only support your new phone but pay better interest rates and charge lower fees.

Then you remember that time when they charged you that fee for some BS reason last year and you swore you were going to get a new bank but never got around to it, and decide that you'd rather get on with what you always intended to do sooner rather than later instead of replacing your new phone that you otherwise like.

[Arainach]

>Microsoft was completely abandoned in the mobile market because they were so widely hated.

This was not a factor. Windows phone lost because they didn't have apps. They didn't have apps because they rewrote between Windows Mobile 6 and WP7, and rewrote between WP7 and WP8, and rewrote between between WP8.1 and WP10. That's a lot of work for developers and they didn't have enough users to justify developers rewriting their apps that many times. Combine that with some companies refusing to build apps at all (YouTube refused to write an app and sued to block Microsoft from writing their own YouTube client) and users didn't want to put up with the lack of apps either.

[AnthonyMouse]

> This was not a factor. Windows phone lost because they didn't have apps.

They didn't have apps because nobody likes them. If you're a user and you expect them to be well-liked then you buy the phone expecting others to buy the phone and developers to target it. If you're a developer then you make apps expecting enough users to buy the phone.

But if you don't like them and you're not sure anybody else is going to like them then you play wait and see instead, and so does everybody else, and so they have no apps and no users and people start to see that they have no apps and no users.

Which is why they kept changing things trying to force people to do it, giving Windows 8 that widely-disliked tablet interface on desktops etc.

> YouTube refused to write an app and sued to block Microsoft from writing their own YouTube client

Oh no, did someone with a dominant OS market share do an anti-competitive thing to Microsoft?

You're asking why people don't pick up Linux faster but you can see the symmetry when it's going the other way. It's not that they don't want to, it's that 80% of enshitification is lock-in.