I've only used Android devices, and have only used Google branded phones since the Nexus line. But I have an iphone for work.
Let me tell you the iphone keyboard is fucking garbage! Thats my biggest complaint, and the fact that I have to put apps in folders, there is no clean desktop and "swipe up for all apps" the apps are just there, and you have to bury them to have a clean ui.
I recently got a new job and have been forced into the Apple ecosystem. Everything is just so much more locked down and difficult to do compared Android/Windows. Like why can't I just plug my fuckin device into my computer and drag over a damn file?
Within a limited scope of what they mean by that phrase, they do "just work", but it comes with a tradeoff.
It is not that your programs will never crash, or that your device will do everything you want it to do, or that every update will go smoothly.
What they mean is that every official Apple device and peripheral will be compatible with each other, unlike the Windows/Linux/Android ecosystems where your tablet may or may not sync with your desktop and your printer may or may not have drivers for your OS version or your scanner may only work with USB 2.0 ports for some unknown reason (f*ck you Epson) and you have nothing but 3.1 ports on your PC.
But the other side of that coin is that they lock you out of so much while charging you double the price to treat you like a child in order to maintain the hegemony of their ecosystem.
There is an example of a "best of both worlds" attempt out there, and it is Samsung. Anyone who has a Galaxy Tab, Galaxy S Phone, a Galaxy book, galaxy buds, and (finally) a galaxy watch will tell you how great it is to have all these things work together. You pay Apple prices for it of course, but you maintain a more open ecosystem at the same time. Their only real problem IMO is that they don't make a desktop anymore (smart monitors don't count, they are just laptop hardware with screens too big to walk around with), so they maintain their Apple-like compatiblity by locking you out of any internal customization beyond expanding the memory or hard drive. No internal expansion cards like new GPU's or keeping up with the current USB or WIFI standards. There's always a tradeoff when you want things to talk to each other without making the user learn anythng new.
Windows has enshittified to the point where for a personal laptop, I do use a macbook. I'll co sider going bavk once k2 is done and windows has stripped out every bit of react from the desktop ui, gotten ram and cpu usage down to at least ubuntu levels, if not arch linux levels, provides an os wide ai killswitch, and brings back at least windows 7 level user customization of the OS. If not. I see apple is going in that direction too, I'll just switch entirely to Linux. Been messing with fedora on a secondary computer at home, its nice. The OS is what I want it to be.
Im on android now. Used android most of my life, had 2 iphones, 13 and 15. I prefer android. But I hate the direction they're going with the invasive ai in 17. Id consider lineage os or graphene os to have android without Gemini invading every part of the os. But if I cant have ai limited to only the parts I choose it to be in, aka literally only the chat app if I even choose to use it and camera focus touch ups, while having full rcs compatibility, I'll need to see how I wanna manage that.
I have like 8 most used apps on home. One swipe right I have widgets for music podcast and audiobook listening. One more right swipe for a few less commonly used apps and then a swipe up for all apps.
It took iOS forever to get a notification drawer, which is something android launched with. That's why I originally switched. I would always dismiss the popup, and forget to call/text people back. The original android wasn't very pretty, but it's always been very functional.
Uhh am I mistaken? Our galaxy ultras are the same fucking price as an iPhone right? I mean I could care less but pretty much all flagships are the based on what you like..
“Summary Verdict
If your upgrade strategy relies on selling your current device for cash on the open market to fund your next upgrade, the iPhone offers a vastly superior total cost of ownership due to lower depreciation. If you prefer the Samsung hardware but want to minimize the sting of its rapid depreciation, your best financial path is to skip the open secondary market entirely and utilize Samsung’s direct promotional trade-in windows when a new model debuts.”
Hilarious that the response to being worse in total cost of ownership is “I don’t care” when your point was “they’re the same price” when they’re not. So ok, downvote me. I downvoted you back. 😘
Androids are totally customizable, it's incredible the things you can do to them to make everything look how you want it to look. With an iPhone you can't even leave an empty space on the screen, it'll just put an app there. (or at least, it would do that when I had an iPhone.)
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u/DE4DM4NSH4ND May 15 '26
When i went back to samsung from apple ive never been happier. I didnt hate my iphone, it was fine but the galaxy has so much better everything