Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

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> Apple puts the user in charge how an mobile OS should look like or should behave and this is the biggest differentiating factor between iOS vs other platforms.

The user in charge? Interesting. I have both an iPhone and an Android handset. It has been this way for years (work is the reason). I believe I will never be able to fully accept the iPhone.

It seems like it wants to make a lot of (often stupid) decisions for me. When I want to connect my phone via cable to transfer some files it is always a hassle. I can't sideload apps that somehow goes against Apple's will. As an example, NewPipe is a blessing on Android if you enjoy YouTube (not available via Google Play). The fact that full phone backups are done via an video/audio player (iTunes) makes zero sense.

I feel trapped and irritated when I use the iPhone. When I use the Android phone I feel like the OS trusts me to make my own decisions.

I should perhaps mention that I chose to run Android without a Google account or Gapps. I've gone from Cyanogen via Copperhead to Lineage. Ironically, Android without Google is the best phone experience I've ever had.

Backups do not require iTunes at all. You can backup and restore to iCloud automatically. I have not used iTunes for backup for a long time. Also if you want to use iTunes you do not need to have the phone plugged into anything. Having iTunes open and have the phone connected to the same network via Wifi is all you need to do to sync.

> Also if you want to use iTunes you do not need to have the phone plugged into anything.

Titanium Backup on Android allows for pretty much seamless updates across ROMs (if you know what you're doing). Try doing the same on iOS... oh, sorry. There's no choice in OS vendors there.

> if you know what you're doing

That is the key difference. What if I don’t want to be the sysadmin for my phone? What if I don’t want to root my phone? What if I prefer things to just work out of box?

https://youtu.be/0eEG5LVXdKo (start at 2:37)

It's about choice. 2 billion people with Androids aren't sysadmins. The phones work fine out of the box. The parent likes choice, while some people don't miss it. No need for strawman arguments.

> The phones work fine out of the box.

Do they? Is there a one touch full device backup solution for Android that doesn’t involve rooting the phone or flashing custom ROM? Is there a way to easily sync my sessages to other devices[1]?

The two billion people do no flash custom ROMs or root their devices. They do not even get sucurity patches on time. But they try to use their device just the way one would use an iPhone — with almost zero customisation. So they end up with a phone which doesn’t do everything it should straight out of the box and is vulnerable for most of its lifetime, for the sake of choices/cusomizability they would never use.

I you are talking about the choice of OEMs, I agree. It is not ideal that Apple is the only iOS vendor[2]. But the benefits, IMO, outweigh the problems.

[1] Messages for web is a recent advancement.

[2] While we are on the subject of multiple OEMs, I’d prefer if OEMs followed the Windows model where they can install a few apps and tweak things a bit, but can’t (do not?) make drastic changes to the OS. I’d prefer to live in a world where I don’t have to worry about whether the Android Phone I am looking at is more vulnerable than the others.

If you are OK with a Google account, yes, there is backup. I suspect you have to pay if you want more than 15gb, but that's a pretty OK limit.

The first part of the comment is useful info. The second is pretty useless. There is zero need for this to turn into vim vs. emacs which is what everyone of these threads seems to turn into lately.

>Backups do not require iTunes at all. You can backup and restore to iCloud automatically.

As always, replace "cloud" with "someone else's computer" to see why I don't consider this an option.

Then you can use iTunes to back up locally. Not seeing the issue beyond you dislike Apple.

What? But then they do require iTunes, no? Which was the point of the comment I replied to.

>t seems like it wants to make a lot of (often stupid) decisions for me. When I want to connect my phone via cable to transfer some files it is always a hassle. I can't sideload apps that somehow goes against Apple's will. As an example, NewPipe is a blessing on Android if you enjoy YouTube (not available via Google Play). The fact that full phone backups are done via an video/audio player (iTunes) makes zero sense.

This is what bothers me too. On an iOS device, you have to do everything in an app, and if the app doesn't support what you want to do, it's just not possible. Want to take an mp3 file from the web and play it with iTunes. Not easy. Got some audio books that you want to load in and play in your podcast player? Not easy. Everything has to go through each app, and there's no way to move data from one app to another, unless the apps have specifically setup that hand-off.

> there's no way to move data from one app to another, unless the apps have specifically setup that hand-off

iOS now has what's essentially a file-picker since iOS 11, to support storage of files on your device and iCloud.

This irritates me too, and is a step back to the old PC/Mac era of app silos.

Many things you state are factually incorrect. The rest has alternatives and does not bother the majority of the user base.

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