Hey, at least your 32-bit newspapers will be safe for as long as you can keep the paper in good condition…
iPhone user here, but probably not the normal demographics: I use very few apps, for example.
I tried Android a few times (I even tried jolla) and always come back to the iPhone for privacy. It is simply the only platform which allows me to sync and backup my data locally. I don’t use iCloud, I just sync with my computer.
I want to keep my calendar and contacts private. Actually, because I have work contacts in my phone, I am legally required to keep those private (or to ask each user whether they agree or not). I know nobody respects that, but I do. That also means I cannot use services wilke whatsapp, for example, as the first thing it does is send all your contacts to their servers.
I know people who work in marketing and big data. Contacts are the single most precious information they are looking for. Not only they are used for viral marketing (whatsapp, facebook and linkedin were notorious for spamming all your contacts in your name) and are an indication of your social level and likely spending and interests, but they are also used as a stable identifier.
Stable identifiers are the holy grail of targeted marketing. People change id all the time: they change their mail, their address, their phone number, their credit card, their name (e.g. marriage or divorce), etc… all the time. For marketers, re-authentification is a very valuable service to link that one customer with a new phone and new credit card to all his or her history for past years.
Humans keep their collection of friends, acquaintances and family pretty stable and there is zero chance that someone else also keeps the number of your mother, brother, boss and that friendly neighbour who waters your plants when you are off. That make contacts the perfect way to identify you.
So: yes, this is why I have an iPhone. The first thing android does is to send all that info to google. The only other option is to use android without google services (e.g. by installing lineage os without google libraries) and I know some people who do just that.
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That’s very interesting. The first thing I used when I switched to Android in October 2008 on the G1 was the seamless Contacts syncing to the cloud. It was heaven compared to the archaic syncing I was doing on my computer with Palm Desktop. It was heaven and I never looked back at the iPhone again. Even with the much poorer hardware in the early years. Android was simply so far and away a more efficient and superior UX, albeit ugly and inconsistent. The workflow (especially with background threading) made up for the deficiencies. Then over time (especially after Android 4), even the UI got better than iOS.
So, it’s interesting to see how different people have different priorities. BTW, you could always use Android without syncing Contacts and other data. You simply have to turn syncing off in Accounts. At that point, unless you are paranoid of Search as well, all you need to do is use Google for the Play Store. Of course, you can change your search engine as well.
Yes, most people are willing to trade privacy for convenience.
I could also run my own carddav server, that would allow seamless syncing without leaking data. Easy on the iPhone, more involved on Android.
Companies get solutions to sync corporate phones without leaking data to google or apple BTW, normally by syncing on an exchange server. Maybe they know something that the general public does not.
It still amazes me developers will create software exclusively for an OS with a 14% market and ignore the other 85% that are Android. Personally, my family and I are happy with Motos. Decent phones and cheap enough that they’re ‘no tears’ when bad stuff happens. I just ordered a slightly obsolete G4 Play for my wife for $95. But we’re definitely telecom outliers, with $10/mo prepay MVNO service for 500 each of minutes, texts and gb. I rarely have to add more gb since I’m usually in a wifi.
It doesn’t matter how little money I’ve spent on apps. I just don’t want to learn a new thing if I switch. So I don’t see the sunk cost fallacy as applicable here.
Because that’s time not being spent on art. And if either works as well as the other, then there’s no real reason to want to switch, apart from bizarre arguments about alled gardens being a reduction in freedom and jailbreaks which look more like obnoxious hassles.
Because one poses a better chance at reaching a given audience? Do you think that every app fits every use for every user?
Maybe the android market is also segmented in ways that you’re unaware of?
Maybe not everyone wants to drive Popular Car, and wants a Volvo instead, and the developer is making things useful for Volvo drivers?
All that may be true, but it would still make a lot of business sense to make a version for the other 85% of phones out there, unless your app is specific to some hardware that makes the iPhone unique. Of which there’s very little. I have a hard time thinking of a non-hardware specific product that would only be useful to Volvo drivers. Cyan you imagine someone making an aftermarket dashcam that only worked on Volvos? You’d think they were a moron.
You said you didn’t understand why a dev might pick an OS less popular to do anything for, but you’ve really made no apparent effort to understand it, and the questions I asked are just examples of considerations that one might take into account. I’m sure there’s more, but I was also thinking very generally (and these things were sort of immediately obvious).
But is it really that hard to understand that some people might like iOS more? Or might like developing for iOS more? I guess really, what more would you need than that in order to “understand” it?
No, because it was an example of choosing to do something for a thing that has a much more limited market share for someone who expresses a different set of preferences than the ones you’re apparently used to, not something meant to be taken literally applicable to examples like “dashcams.”
Try this: FreeBSD is often developed for, in spite of how limited its market share is compared to other OSes.
Do you think there might be a few reasons for that, even if you don’t happen to know what they are?
Or we could think about games. Why do you think might people like to dev for whichever gaming platform is in, say, 3rd place right now, even exclusively?
No, I said It still amazes me developers will create software exclusively for an OS with a 14% market and ignore the other 85% that are Android. Exclusive vs inclusive. Why go the effort to develop an app and not bother to port it to the platform >5x more popular? You seem to take this personally or something. People amaze me all the time at what they’re willing to do for amusement, but as a entrepreneur I am baffled at putting effort into a product and then leaving money on the table. Perhaps they might consider it their artform. Whatever.
I had never used android until recently I sent my iphone 6s plus off to get the battery replaced. I was jonesing without a smartphone so I got a prepaid Verizon moto e4 for $50 just to have something to keep me connected.
I was seriously impressed at how this $50 phone does almost everything my iphone that cost 20 times as much could do. I now feel comfortable that if push came to shove I could get by just fine with an Android phone. The only thing I would miss is the iphone camera. It is really freeing when the phone itself cost about what I paid for the apple case on my 6s.
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Would it be too far or unPC to say you’ve been “Red Pilled”? The higher end Motos that cost 1/5 an iPhone 10 do have better cameras, though not quite as good as that $1k phone.
Well, XCode is a great tool for building apps on iOS which a lot of developers already have, assuming they own a Mac. The tools for building apps for Android have only recently gotten better ever since Google decided to go with IntellijIDEA as their basis. I personally found it easier to build an app on iOS than for Android.
Note that this is anecdotal, and the stories I heard and read from other mobile developers are a couple of years old.
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I’m an old crabby pseudo-pinko. As such, I have huge problems empowering data hoovers like Google so, you know, there’s a degree of finding Android offensive. But, you know, that’s me. It seems I’m in a small minority; the majority apparently is happy making personal data more easily available to the NSA.
…sorry, what? Sailfish’s primary way of backing up is onto an SD card, which you can then copy onto your computer. Failing that, you could always just plug your phone in and copy with an sftp client.
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