Hacker News Reader

Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

Long time Google fanboy here, and I'm honestly a hair's breadth away from buying an iphone 13.

I have had nexus/pixels phones since the gnex. I have evangelized android to for almost as long. I did ground work for google by pushing people into google's services. I have a day 1 pixel 6 pro. I pay for cloud storage and yt premium.

But to me google is just falling apart. I feel like they have lost their technology drive in order to pursue ideological ones. Their tech has become all half-assed with poor/no support. I cannot trust anything they make to be supported in the future anymore. RCS is still a disaster, my one friend on Fi with a pixel 5a still cannot get it working and Google/Fi has pretty said "We don't know".

I do not like Apple, but after almost 20 years a Google fanboy, I'm starting to like Google even less. So much so that I'll have to eat lots of shame from the many iphone people who questioned my android love for years.

*If anyone can convince me otherwise, please do*. I feel like the best thing that could happen is disposing of Sundar and getting someone who can refocus google on being a tech company devoted to making the best tech products.

View on HN

I switched from Google to Apple after being in the Google ecosystem since the early days of Android. I had pretty much every single Nexus, Pixel, and a variety of Samsung devices. But Google's lack of support, half-assed one-foot in one-foot out, and lack of support made me switch to Apple about 3 years ago and I've never been happier.

Apple's ecosystem, while it doesn't offer as much, is a much superior and polished experience. iMessage works great, integration with Apple Watch is top notch, and the whole ecosystem is very fine-tuned. There are still a bunch of things to complain about, for sure, but overall comparing the two is a night and day difference.

I've slowly started phasing out all my Google products.. and not by choice either. Had Google Nest and Nest Secure for over 3 years until Google decided to just cancel Nest Secure all-together. Google Home devices are increasingly being less and less effective. Google just can't seem to commit to anything longer than 2-3 years and I'm sick of it. I'd much rather deal with getting features much later but thoroughly thought out, then half-assed and cancelled in 2 years. I will say the one thing I do miss is native Google Assistant, Siri is complete ass in comparison.

I switched recently, and honestly have found the experience on iPhone to broadly be worse. There are a few things that are a bit nicer, but the downgrade in the notifications system alone just tanks the experience.

That said I switched for mostly privacy reasons, so won't be going back.

I don’t think I’ve ever used android for more than about 30 seconds on someone else’s phone. I wasn’t aware there was a difference in the notification system. What makes android better?

Android notifications can be more interactive. They're you perform quick actions like reactions to slack messages or archiving emails. Basically the things you can do on an Apple Watch but not the iPhone.

That’s up to the developer, the APIs have existed for 2ish years I think. I reply to texts and Slack messages through notifications.

There are limits, but it’s not display only like it used to be.

I have yet to see a single interactive notification. What settings do you have to configure to get Slack to let you reply from a notification?

I believe you have to grab the notification and sort of “drag it down” to see the interactive part. It’s not shown by default.

Long press on it to bring up the options. And drag to left for options to change notification preferences.

I just long pressed on a Slack notification and a “reply” text box appeared above the keyboard.

Thanks, I had no idea this was a thing on iOS.

I reply to slack notification on Apple Watch with dictation or canned message. Reply on phone just opens slack.

How is a completely proprietary OS more private? I think LineageOS is the most private.

I'm not really sure how the ownership model of the OS is relevant. That said, I agree that Lineage would be the choice where I have the most control, but it simply isn't practical for my personal needs.

Google's whole thing is hoovering up all of your data. Apple at least has other priorities.

> LineageOS is the most private.

It was up until they took away the ability to fake app permissions.

Probably from the sense of sharing of location/identifying information/etc that Apple makes much easier to set and less likely to be circumvented by apps. Apple also does not sell your information, buying habits, etc to 3rd parties like google does. Apple makes money on the hardware and software they sell you. Google makes money on ads and selling your information to 3rd parties.

Apple has a huge vested interest in privacy. The second they stop supporting it, the clock on people switching away and the their stock price plummeting starts. They just have enough money to pay smart people to worry it.

I have a company issued iPhone, and the atrocious notification system is enough to assure I will not buy an iPhone personally. If notifications in iOS were ever completely overhauled to the Android model, I would probably jump ship.

Well, I don't really know the iOS system, but Android lets you authorize (or block) each different interface of notifications (like text, sounds, or appearing at the top) for each different application, and you can do that right from the notification itself.

I imagine this is what the GP is talking about.

I think you replied to the wrong comment? I am quite familiar with the power of the Android notification system. iOS notifications pale in comparison.

That's strange. I replied to a reply of your comment, but it's not there anymore.

You can do all of this on iOS

Not even close to the same extent as you can on Android

Not sure what I’m missing here. I make Android and iOS apps and so I have access to both operating systems and various devices on a daily basis. What is iOS missing that Android has (when it comes to notification settings)?

You should watch the WWDC keynote in 6 weeks :)

Are you an Apple employee or are you basing this on the rumor mill?

Funny. Samsung notifications are a reason I will never buy a Samsung phone again. iOS notifications can be customised to suit my desire.

Bixby and the Samsung crap are the reasons I'll never buy a Samsung phone. The only redeeming thing is that they're not made in China.

That makes sense, but I’m not sure that’s what the GP comment was talking about. For instance, both Samsung and non-Samsung Android devices have threaded/serial message notifications (?) which are very helpful for conversations, whereas iOS still has the primitive notification-per-message system. I’ve learned to live without it now as I prefer iOS for its advantages, but I’m frequently expected to make sense of several notifications out of order for each conversation when one would suffice.

I use a Samsung and my SO an iPhone which I'm the one "administering" and I can tell that both notifications can be customized at (our) will. I have no idea what you mean there.

Pretty much my opinion exactly.

I switched recently from years of Android usage simply because the car I wanted to buy only supported CarPlay. I could either give up Android or give up the car. I chose to keep the car. Now that I’ve had the iPhone a while, there seem to be about the same number of annoyances in iOS as there were with Android, they’re just different. I think I’d give the edge to Android, iOS is slightly more annoying, but not enough to worry about switching back.

Do I understand correctly that your car determined your smartphone choice? Furthermore you considered changing your vehicle selection based on your current smartphone?

I find the concept of a smartphone affecting a transportation decision or the reverse to be highly unusual.

Can you please explain your rational? For example, do you spend excessive amount of time in your car? Do you do specific tasks from your car that require a specific connection between car and smartphone?

Not parent, but nowadays the smartphone is the way to get decent information on the screen of your car. The built-in car infotainment/nav systems are all horrible. Voice recognition is terrible. Plug the phone in, and to a first approximation everything works. With wireless Car Play, you don't even need to plug in.

A car is both longer-lived and more expensive than a phone. It’s definitely not unthinkable to have that influence your choice of smartphone, especially since there might be many other more important factors that affect your choice of car.

Yes, my choice of car determined my smartphone choice. I decided I was more interested in the particular vehicle (Porsche Macan) than the particular smartphone (Pixel 5a vs iPhone 13). Both CarPlay and Android Auto are worlds better than the OEM head unit software crap I've found in any of the cars I've owned (Audi, Porsche, VW, Ford, Chevy, Kia) for both navigation and music/podcast listening. I was hesitant to switch, but I figured it was an easier choice to back out of than a car purchase. And six months later, I think I made the right choice. While I still would prefer Android, I'm ok enough with the iPhone that I'm not bothered day to day with it.

Apparently next year the Macan is getting Android Auto support, so people in the future won't need to make the choice. But I was in need of a car this year, so I had to make the choice.

My $10k Toyota Corolla has android auto. What happened?

Luxury automakers have often been more restrictive and exclusive about features, mostly because they can be. BMW was known for their annual subscription CarPlay option which required ongoing payments for what was clearly a one-time software update. Porsche likely has even more brand loyalty driven by other elements of their cars, so I’m not surprised that they’d choose to negotiate some exclusivity with Apple CarPlay or otherwise just not bother adding Android Auto until 2022.

I switched as well and it's actually such a "pick the lesser evil" situation and I hate that.

I'm gonna write a quick comparison as I've switched between platforms several times (still miss my Windows Phone tbh though):

I've found that no matter which Android "iphone camera killer" phone I got, the camera was unreliable and always ended up having crappy results. Meanwhile, my iPhone pics are constantly a decent quality.

Somehow, iPhone screens _consistently_ shatter for me. Even when I'm careful. I've yet to break the screen on an Android phone -- even if I've used it significantly longer or it was significantly cheaper. Something about iPhone's design or manufacturing lends it to shattering. My current iPhone has a shattered back from when I dropped it on my soft carpet from a foot up-high about a year in...

iPhone and Android software both sucks but Android's app experience is _significantly_ better. Why? BACK BUTTON. Every iPhone app has different expectations around going "back" from swiping up, left, right, or just having no way to go "back" at all. Which is common. Good Android apps are _great_; however, most iPhone apps are ok and most Android apps are not even ok.

iMessage isn't great but it's hard to give up on it. SMS/MMS experience _sucks_ -- so knowing when someone will get your 5 minute audio message in good quality is actually really nice. Sending pictures between platforms _sucks_. With that said, Android's web interface for messages is a million times better than the iMessage app and obv cross-platform.

I also absolutely hate getting data off an iPhone. it's unreliable especially if you don't have a mac. The Android experience is so much nicer.

So it's kind of a give and take. :/

Also -- less notification/customization options on the iPhone but having a hardware "silent" button is rad.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm considering this too as many others in thread.

The camera thing drives me nuts. My pixel 6 can't take a reasonable photo of a flat piece of paper due to spherical distortion causing blurring of text. Sure you can go 2x and hold the phone further as suggested in online discussions but it's nuts that this made it past any attempt at QA and testing.

Similar. I miss Android for its technical features, but Google has turned the typical experience adversarial, like it’s all just an elaborate marketing vector. Apple’s ecosystem remains a proprietary dystopia, and its software is bafflingly inadequate for all the hype, but at least the business model is transparent.

same here switched for privacy/security reasons

i expected IOS to be this perfect experience, but in fact many of apple's own apps are buggy ,and some quality of life features dont exist

and then theres TrueCaller :(

The security upgrades situation on Google is intolerable.

I finally have a phone (3axl) that didn't die in a couple years from accidents / abuse / going to the gym in my pocket, and Google is eol-ing it because they've cut off security upgrades.

My next phone will be an iphone.

Googler opinions are my own.

At least they fixed this with the pixel 6 with a 5 year upgrade plan.

No. Google is the operating system vendor. They either fix this with all Android phones or they haven't fixed anything at all.

Google is not operating system vendor for all Android phones.

They release a generic template, other vendors then apply platform kits for the SoCs they use and they release the operating system for their devices. Google has no idea what it runs on, or what is needed to make it run on specific devices. It is the vendor's task.

Mobile devices have no UEFI, no bus enumeration, so the OS image has to be taylored for each device. It is similar to Raspberry or Odroid or similar SBCs: althrough both are arm, you cannot use Ubuntu (or other disto) image intended for one on another.

That’s the cause of the problem, not the excuse for it.

(disclaimer: I work at Qualcomm)

> Mobile devices have no UEFI

Since the Snapdragon 835, Android devices with Qualcomm processors use UEFI all the way to the kernel.

However, custom UEFI binaries aren't part of the boot flow, with an Android UEFI boot application running instead.

> no bus enumeration

It's device tree instead of ACPI, but apart from that the situation isn't _that_ different from PCs today. We aren't in the ATAGS era anymore. The reflashing interface nowadays is standardised through fastboot too.

> so the OS image has to be taylored for each device

Thankfully a lot of progress has been done on that.

Since Treble, the BSP proper has been untied from Android releases.

Since devices shipping with Android 12, a Google-built kernel with a stable kernel module ABI has been shipping (for a given major kernel + Android version release combo). This allows kernel security updates to be identical across the whole ecosystem.

> althrough both are arm, you cannot use Ubuntu (or other disto) image intended for one on another

That used to be true, but across the whole Android device fleet (even between SoC vendors) it's not true anymore.

However, there's a catch still: there isn't a central update service. So while you might use a custom OS that way, you'll still need to update the vendor partitions (with the drivers, both kernel and user-mode ones) out of band in that scenario to get updates for those.

More info on generic system images: https://developer.android.com/topic/generic-system-image.

This mechanism allows to have universal Android images that work across all of the ecosystem, and can be used for GNU/Linux distributions on phones too if there's motivation to do so.

Hey @my123

> However, there's a catch still: there isn't a central update service. So while you might use a custom OS that way, you'll still need to update the vendor partitions (with the drivers, both kernel and user-mode ones) out of band in that scenario to get updates for those.

> This mechanism allows to have universal Android images that work across all of the ecosystem, and can be used for GNU/Linux distributions on phones too if there's motivation to do so.

So assuming my bootloader is unlocked, have a GSI compliant phone, what is the remaining work I would need to have done in order to get it working under linux (and by working I mean all devices - including cameras and etc)?

> what is the remaining work I would need to have done in order to get it working under

A good chunk of the Linux community on phones didn't want to have to rely on binary drivers for non-technical reasons, and that's one of the reasons why it isn't exactly well taken care of today.

For Ubuntu Touch specifically:

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/introduction/Intr... for Ubuntu Touch.

https://github.com/ubports/porting-notes/wiki/Generic-System...

An upgraded Halium (https://github.com/Halium) image on a can work unmodified across the whole ecosystem of Android devices.

However, the latest currently developed experimental Halium works on an Android 11 base at most, so that devices launched with Android 12 might be using drivers too new for it at this point in time.

(https://gitlab.com/ubports/community-ports/jenkins-ci/generi...)

This can be fixed with an engineering effort to do so to make it work on devices launched with Android 12. The Linux on phones community is very small and that causes problems in this case.

Together with the unified kernel image (GKIs) on Android 12 which allows to have kernel image binaries built with GNU/Linux-specific features that work across the whole fleet, a full straightforward experience can be made possible. This would fill the last chunk of custom per-device bits.

I wonder how big the audience would be for such a project though. :)

They've been at it for years, but it's been a difficult problem to solve. Tangible progress has been made in the last 2 or so OS updates, however.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/talkin-treble-how-an...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/qualcomm-promises-th...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/android-10-has-the-f...

I gave my 6-year old iPhone to elderly relatives and it still gets security upgrades.

Google “upgraded” to less than any other mainstream computing platform. Windows gets about 10 years of security updates for each major version, up to 15 if you pay extra.

And that is just for the OS itself.

Hardware wise, you can easily pull out 20 years or longer simply by constantly bumping up the OS version.

I thought they had moved security updates to be delivered via Google Play so that users could keep receiving them even when the OEM doesn’t deliver OS updates anymore? Or are those separate security updates from the "normal" firmware security patches?

Somewhat? The browser and presumably the webview is distributed through Google Play, yes. But kernel upgrades are not.

Almost all attack services are now updated remotely by Google for security issues. In the kernel only video drivers can be updated remotely (and support for this depends on the vendor).

I think it is a much better way to do security updates than the Apple model - security issues shouldn't have to wait for the next firmware update and for the user to apply them.

I thought that too with my last Android. It never got them, so my next phone was a 6S Plus in 2018 (launched in 2015) that still gets updates.

How do you know you didn't get them? They are silent. Also, I don't think that 'not getting them' is an option other then with video drivers. The whole idea is that security updates should be pushed immediately to all devices and not require user action. You get them even if you don't want them.

There was a place to check in settings. The last one was years before. I don't know how it's done now.

No, that's just for the security updates that must be applied as full firmware updates, usually because they are in the kernel. Google has been progressively redesigning Android over the past decade to the point where they can do all non-kernel security updates immediately and silently via the play store. It's a much better way to do it IMO.

So to be clear: I have no clue about any of this. I like not having to think about what's going on under the hood. I've never had to since getting an iPhone.

It sounds like what you're saying is Google has only continued to shuffle ever more vital functionality into the Play store since I left Android, which negates the often claimed benefits of an "open source" operating system. If all the important stuff is in a proprietary blob attached to a proprietary platform, I might as well stick with the one I already know that's never given me any trouble. I'm not going to root my iPhone or install a custom OS, so that's irrelevant to me.

But you don't have to worry about or understand the Android security updates - they are applied without you even having to do a firmware update. As you indicate, security updates are not something you should have to worry about.

And just because they are applied by the play store doesn't mean they are closed source. The play store itself is closed source, but the security updates to the OS get published via the normal processes.

Android is open enough to allow competition, eg. Amazon's Android, Microsoft's Android runtime, etc. are all done without Google's permission.

To me, that's key, but I'm not trying to tell you whether open source should matter to you. I just wanted to clear up the stuff about the security updates because I think the Android way of doing it is now better than Apple's method.

I have to manually search for the Google Play System updates on my Galaxy S21 and Z Flip 3 (both quite new phones) because they are not being installed automatically. My brother has the same problem with his Galaxy S21.

Some things moved into Google Play, which is a mixed blessing. On the upside, they may get updates longer. On the downside, there's an argument that moving things from AOSP into Google's proprietary blobs is not so great.

> they've cut off security upgrades

Same reason I switched to Apple last year -- after being android only since original Motorola Droid (2009).

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work anywhere near phone stuff.

I assume your friend has tried all the debugging on this page? https://support.google.com/messages/answer/9363493?hl=en My wife's phone keeps failing to connect and we have to do the carrier services reset to make it work. A terrible solution to me requiring factory resetting your phone.

But even then, I have a friend that was never able to get RCS to work on his phone, and he spent multiple hours with Google support trying to figure it out. There is something wrong with his account on Google and the carriers side (he tried multiple phones, and it never worked). The RCS team definitely has some corner cases to work out getting everyone activated, because it leads to really bad stories like this.

Thanks, but I feel I am reaching a point where I need my friend to be able to go to a physical location where they either fix it or clone his phone onto a new one that does work. I can't be google's advocate twisting my friend's arm to troubleshoot their phone anymore.

This is just a tiny sliver of my dissatisfaction too. I feel like the long time lover that sits down one night and after a lot of thinking gives pause with "Wait, why am I still in this relationship?"

Because those wonderful jingles made it so appealing! And keep you coming back for the "phone plan that can!"

I think Google was in a different position than Apple in the case of messaging client. Apple has total control of the text message app on the iPhone, or Google does not. Google had to appease Samsung and likely some other cell phone makers to allow them to make their own RCS compatible app. Google took RCS and created universal profiles, and I think wants to get Apple on board with it so that there is a shared protocol between vendors.

Apple went to full proprietary stack that no one else can use, while Google went the more open protocol. Open protocols like this always tend to have a bit more headache, and we're seeing that with RCS. Especially when some of the players are cell service providers.

If the EU open protocol legislation ever pans out, I wonder how that would impact iMessage and RCS.

I've had an Android device since the G1, then the G2... I'm currently on Project Fi with a Pixel 4a. When this phone no longer suits me, I'll also be moving to Apple hardware. At some point, and it's subjective / an individual choice but, enough is enough.

I went round about a lot. Started with windows phone back when it had the honeycomb ui. Stuck with it until I moved to Singapore where Microsoft announced a new phone and didn’t release it anywhere except a few countries.

From there I went to iPhone 4 and had so many issues. So I went to the Note 4 and initially I loved it. But android got slower and slower so after 6 months I reset the phone and didn’t install anything. It got slower and slower and all I used was phone text and browser.

But I refused to go back to Apple.

I did a few hours of work for a friend fixing something and was complaining about my phone being slow so he bought me an iPhone 6 max as payment.

I was annoyed at first but it was so fast… and I’ve stuck with iPhone since and don’t regret it. Best thing ever moving over to iPhone.

After reading your comment, my first thought was to tell you to be more open to change. Seriously, it’s just a phone… just try it out :)

PS: I was the same as you (used Android, despised Apple) but eventually made the switch and never intend to go back.

>> I cannot trust anything they make to be supported in the future anymore.

That's actually the largest reason I can't invest in Google's ecosystem, but that's mostly from a tech stack end.

Not really here to convince you of one os / ecosystem or the other, but wanted to say that you can get an iPhone, try it for two weeks and return it if you don’t like it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com