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Comment by apexalpha | Hacker News Reader

My grandma bought a mid-prized Android phone. All she does is lookup recipes on Youtube and Whatsapp her family.

After 2 months (!) she came to me with the phone. Somehow she now had ads on her lockscreen, her default browser was hijacked by some other browser app with ads, and multiple apps had persistent notifications and were running continuously. Among them AVG anti-virus, some cleanup tool...

I have no idea how they got there. Probably because they pop-up in Ads with texts like "YOU NEED TO INSTALL THIS".

My grandma can't differentiate between an Ad like that and a serious System update notification.

It's stuff like this that leads people to just "give up" and buy an expensive Apple device. For all their faults at least they protect you from this kind of nonsense. The Lenovo is just the same, really. A profound disrespect for their own users and the usability of their own product.

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Apple isn't for everyone, but it's a lot more consumer focused than Android is.

It's one reason why Apple phones still do really well on the secondhand market.

My parents both had Android tablets (Samsung iirc), but they didn't use them for very long, switched to iPads, and used them at the dinner table for years afterwards - just checking news, playing games, that kind of thing.

My dad bought a laptop the other day to play games and watch F1 with - at least the pre-installed shit wasn't too bad. Still had to talk him out of getting both AVG and some other virus scanner though, that would've bogged his system down and make him lose trust, because virus scanners these days are scareware - that is, if they don't pop up every once in a while pretending to be useful, people will get rid of them.

My mother in-law got her first iPhone recently and after few days of „training” done by herself managed to get a hang of everything she needs.

Apple products UX is so much better than anything currently available on the market, but its slowly eroding due to lack of Steve Jobs.

He had a huge drive to make perfect UX. Newer designers lack this and you can just feel it from how new versions of iOS look like.

And how new iphones design is just small changes or bigger screen. They no longer have that spark like they used to with Jobs.

RIP Steve, visioners are not looked upon kindly.

On the other hand, it’s hard to make great innovative leaps with a mature product. The iPhone is something like 15 years. And I’m happy that they don’t change things just because they think they should.

And it looks like their laptops actually found the path again.

At the same time, they keep adding useful features. I noticed something new in the Notes app the other day. I had entered a recipe as a note and all the recipe quantities (e.g. "1 tbsp", "5 cups", etc) had a faint underline. I tapped it and got an overlay with the units in a bunch of variations: liters, CCs, gallons, pints, etc.

Sometimes Apple products just have these really nice touches. Other times, it's confounding where the gaps are and leave me wondering if Apple even uses their own product. I have two garage doors that I've HomeKit enabled and if I tell Siri "close the garage door" I get asked which one, even if only one is open. Even if I say "close both garage doors" or "close all garage doors" I still get prompted.

I'm coming from a techy 30-something person with Android for years, but also had iPhone for work from 2014-2019.

The UI of Nova Launcher on my S21 is so much more intuitive than Apple. Apple does everything through swipes. Swipes suck for several reasons, one of them being that I must swipe certain positions at certain speeds to get everything done. I miss buttons. Related: After two weeks of owning an iPhone 14, I was complaining about how I can't move my cursor in the URL field. It just kept highlighting words! My friend told me the super-intuitive iOS experience: hold down Spacebar to move your cursor. I'm glad that was covered in the non-existent tutorial.

Then there are the anxiety inducing badges, the fact that settings is an app instead of a system menu, the fact that control center (or whatever the system drop down is) can't have nearly the function of Android's system drop down, the fact that notification center doesn't feel trustworthy or consistent, the fact that notification center shows me notifications from blacklisted apps even in focus mode...

Android's UI just makes so much more fucking sense. And I hate that I am tempted now to go back to my S21 with inferior camera and DAC/bluetooth stack just to have software that makes sense.

I acknowledge this is a rant and not as well put-together as most of my comments, but effing Hell, iOS is a mixed bag.

For a light rant about iOS usability, I’m saddened to see downvotes instead of discussion. I expect that from r/Apple.

> one reason why Apple phones still do really well on the secondhand market

Apple products do well on the second-hand market because Apple usually doesn’t cannibalize that market by selling low-end devices. By positioning themselves as a premium brand and ensuring that the low end of the market is not served with new products, they ensure that the low end will be served by the second-hand market. PC/Android can’t do this because they don’t control the hardware and there’s always some brand that will sell new low-end devices which compare favorably to any used device.

In the few cases where Apple has deviated from this strategy of not serving the low end, resale values have suffered. The iPhone 8 and iPhone X were released at basically the same time. But the X currently sells for roughy 25% of its original price whereas the 8 sells for closer to 15%. This is due to the introduction of the SE which is basically just a cheaper and better 8.

The main reason why Apple phones do well on the used market is probably the absurdly powerful CPUs in them.

An iPhone XS (from 2018) has the single-core performance of the most expensive 1000$+ non-Apple phone you can find.

iPhone 11 (from 2019) is still unbeaten.

iPhone 8 and X will still have a much more powerful CPU than most phone models on sale today.

Similar story for my mom. She was used to windows because at work she used locked down, centrally managed, IBM thinkpads for many years. The trick is that those were secure and managed. If anything didn't work, they just got swapped by IT for another clean one.

But she always had problems with her private laptop, and no assistant or IT department to fix it. We thought she needed a windows one because that is what she knew, but the switch to a macbook air took maybe a week or so to adjust to.

It was a bit of a gamble, since I don't own a mac so supporting one via phone would be very tricky. But she has had the macbook now for years and I've had to do absolutely zero tech support on it. For emails, Word documents and some web browsing it really just works.

Similar story with my Mum. I bought her a Chromebook, and haven't had an IT support call from her since.

My dad had never used a Mac in his life until I helped him buy an M1 Air. He loves that thing. The only thing I did was install Brave and make it the default browser.

I think he gives Apple credit for how fast his internet is, when really it’s due to Brave. But the rest of the experience— no crap ware, no spyware, no ads in the system— that’s on Apple.

Edit: forgot the main point, which is that he needed no handholding. Given how often he had to replace his crapware-ridden netbooks in the past decade due to performance degradation or something physically breaking, I showed him the trivial math that made the MacBook look like an economic decision as much as a QoL decision.

Safari with a content blocker like Wipr is very fast too, and easier on the battery compared to chromium based browsers.

My dad’s life is made easier with a MacBook Air + iPhone combo because all his 2FA SMS codes get auto inputted into the 2FA field so he does not have to type out the number.

I wonder if there's a business opportunity here - managed IT, but for the less savvy consumer? Does that already exist?

The absolute worse for me was when I found myself trying to explain to my grandma that you must ALLOW cookie preferences, but you must absolutely DENY notification permissions. For trying to read some news online... The web is a harmful mess.

In Firefox, for example, you can deny every request for notifications in the settings.

For the cookie thing you can just install “I don’t care about cookies”

Same in Chrome, it's great: https://zapier.com/blog/block-notifications-chrome/

i hope you understand the inherent irony of your second suggestion, but if you missed it: I Don’t Care About Cookies just got bought by one of these companies known for similar types of abusive UX (surveillance-ware).

There is a fork by the community "I still don't care about cookies" (note the "still") that should avoid any evil stuff Avast would do to the original extension.

But, of course, you have to be a savvy enough, and informed enough user to even know this.

If you're going to install add-ons, just get them uBlock Origin and enable all filter lists. The "annoyances" lists block all the cookie madness.

The shitty thing is, she'd probably be better served by denying cookie preferences... but despite whatever regulations say, companies find impressively difficult ways to keep the user from answering "no, please don't spy on me".

Every cookie banner that I've ever clicked "no" on has let me proceed to the main site. The user is still a potential viewer of ads, even if they can't be microtargeted, so it's worth it to the site to let them proceed.

I had the same thing with my mother. She plays Candy Crush, actively uses WhatsApp, Youtube, Facebook, takes photos to share with friends/family and not much else.

Tapping adds apparently lead to installing these things called "Launcher" which are essentially complete phone UI and those launchers have ads that lead to even more hideous apps. They also lie about the thing you are installing, she was trying to get some emojis and I checked back then, the launcher in question was disguised as emoji thingy. You need to carefully read the text to understand that you get the emojis together with complete phone UI replacement.

I can't stand the Android way of doing things. How it is possible to replace the main user interface of the device? I understand the desire to completely control your device and I do support it in principle but this sort of modifications should be possible only by going through scary screens that let only people know what they do achieve that sort of device modifications.

One has to grant permissions to install unknown software. That means going into settings and flipping a toggle. Are you saying these ads somehow bypassed that?

Who said anything about unknown software? Unless of course by unknown you mean software on Google Play store, then yes that switch is probably switched to install Candy Crush and WhatsApp. It's not a 2007 Nokia after all, some "unknown" apps are needed.

You don't think these ads can take you to an official-looking step-by-step guide to do so?

Not about what I think, was wanting clarification.

These days on Android when sideloading things the installer will give you instructions and then can automatically send you to the correct settings screen and scrolls down to the correct toggle, and it may even highlight it I believe, it's been awhile.

> How it is possible to replace the main user interface of the device?

It's a general-purpose computer like a PC, not an appliance like a game console. That's not for everyone, I guess.

> It's stuff like this that leads people to just "give up" and buy an expensive Apple device. For all their faults at least they protect you from this kind of nonsense. The Lenovo is just the same, really. A profound disrespect for their own users and the usability of their own product.

Be careful what you wish for. For many power users, overlays and replacing the default browser are 100% essential. Removing them just for the sake of user safety would be a grave mistake.

Google is already pushing to replace overlays with "bubbles" for example.

I'm not sure how much protection this affords, but I'm aiming to only buy phones that are on the LineageOS support list, and can have their bootloader unlocked.

Weird how things that the manufacturer would consider insecurities, eg unlocked bootloader, allow end users the kind of control that can increase security and privacy (admittedly, maybe conflating privacy and security). Highlighting the disconnect between industry security and user interest (even though users, by and large, aren't interested in their own interests).

I treat use of SafetyNet or attempting to detect root as actively malicious and give apps that do that 1-star ratings on Google Play.

I realize there's a theoretical risk the OS could be compromised or malware could have superuser permissions, but my previous attempts to find any significant data breaches or user harm caused that way have come up empty. If anybody knows of one, I'd be interested to read about it.

SafetyNet doesn't protect me from having my personally identifiable browsing data sucked away and sold off, and that happens daily to all users of their devices. Google can't even sanitize their own ad platforms.

What are you attempting to protect me from then SafetyNet? Oooh, I get it, you're trying to protect apps created by companies that collect and store sensitive data to minimise the chances of said companies being sued for, and having to publicise, a data breach. Ok, why didn't you just say that? Yeah, you're right, it doesn't play anywhere near as well to the great unwashed.

SafetyNet sounds like shit to me:

> requires Google Play Services to be enabled on the device for the API to function smoothly.

> SafetyNet works in combination with the snet service on Android devices which collects data about the integrity of the device and constantly ping Google about the safety status of the device.

> Google offers many other options like application sandboxing, encryption, app-based permissions and so on to secularize apps but none of them are considered as an all-inclusive solution.

(GPS permissions required for wifi scanning? Fix your basic shit first!)

> By identifying devices which are currently in the non-tampered state the API provides an assurance that the device on which the app is running is neither rooted nor using a custom ROM.

(cough Magisk cough)

Above excerpted from an article admittedly with rose-coloured glasses view of the subject: https://www.hexnode.com/blogs/safetynet-android-security/

I could not get Magisk working, so for me I cannot use rooted Android as I like to be able to access my bank accounts and credit cards.

Hide the app, then setup the Configure / Enforced DenyList things. Mine also has Zygisk enabled.

I don't use my phone for banking, but I do have a crypto wallet that refuses to run on a rooted device, but Magisk solved that for me.

"expensive Apple device" I know it's a lot of money for some folks, but a new iPhone SE is $400, and old iPhones remain serviceable for an absurdly long time — the iPhone SE 1st gen was compatible with latest-versions on release date for seven freaking years.

How is a $400 device that lasts seven years more expensive than even $200 budget Androids that have to get replaced every two years?

My dad accepts every websites request to send notifications. His phone is just constant chime after chime. I went into his Chrome, removed them all, and disabled the option, but somehow it finds itself on and his phone loaded with them every couple months.

It's because people assume that these things are benevolent because they were made by people. Gen X on down are natural skeptics so we don't end up with as much garbage on our phones, it's still possible to accidentally click a pop up when you were getting ready to hit a link.

> possible to accidentally click a pop up when you were getting ready to hit a link.

I personally believe that some sites are designed to shift just a bit to cause this. Like they've used analytics to know how quickly people push the link and now they've designed a slow loading image to shift the page at that point.

And yet every time mobile Safari comes up people on this site go off about how it's "broken" because it does not support notifications from websites. There are legit uses of website notifications, but 99% will be spam like this.

99% of spam... like my email

They're coming. In 2023, according to the Safari section on this[1] page.

1: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/features/

> There are legit uses of website notifications

I have yet to see one

Meanwhile FF allows one to just disable those requests altogether for all sites until further notice.

I find the best solution for people who accidentally click on ads is ad blockers.

Firefox for Android has AdBlock plus support now. The browser itself is somewhat slower than chrome on Android but totally worth it for the ad blocker.

For YouTube there is YouTube Premium or NewPipe.

Sorry I meant ublock origin (though it may have AdBlock as well)

That's why you should install an adblocker for any relative. Brave will kill all ads, and many apps like Trackercontrol offer a local DNS server that will block any ad - related domain.

> It's stuff like this that leads people to just "give up" and buy an expensive Apple device

It’s usually not even “expensive” when you consider the frequency with which people replace low-end hardware. All of my Android-using relatives replace their phones and tablets 2-3 times more frequently so they end up paying more for slower hardware and then having to spend time playing tech support instead of using their devices.

To be clear, that’s not Android’s fault in the sense that the market is broken: Apple is fine with you having a 6 year old device because you’re probably using the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, etc. There’s also some lesson about how consumers want the ability to install things outside of the App Store but statistically a large fraction of us can’t do that safely.

Gift your relatives an ad free life by installing Fennec + uBlockOrigin and NewPipe from F-Droid.

> My grandma can't differentiate between an Ad like that and a serious System update notification.

Whenever I use a new platform with a new UI paradigm, I’m a little like that too.

Even first time on fresh iOS I installed a “lite” app with ads that was definitely not what I thought it was.

I have the exact same issue with mine. As a workaround I set a password to install apps from the play store and it works, she never download new apps so it's not an issue.

An iPhone SE isn't "expensive" if you value your time at all.

I got all of my older relatives and in-laws to buy one (eventually) and they've been 99% problem free ever since. With Androids it was even worse than trying to get their "got it from the store on sale" Windows-laptops cleaned up.

My mother is on her second iPhone SE, she used the first one until it didn't get software updates (5 years IIRC). If everything goes as usual, she'll be using it until 2025.

what's messed up is these apps are in the play store, rated e for everybody (so parental controls can't filter them) and have 5 star ratings from thousands of users.

Complete and utter failure on Google's part.

For seniors, you might check out the Jitterbug smartphones. It's Android with a custom launcher, and from memory, piggybacking on the Verizon network.

Have you used one? I know someone who bought one because she wanted an easy-to-use device, and it was nearly unusable. The thing one had like 1 or 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage which was quickly filled by photos (on crap quality camera). The thing somehow became slower than molasses to operate.

Thankfully I was able to copy off the pictures, and I bought her a Pixel 4a, installed a tempered glass screen protector and thin/minimal TPU case, went through the settings with her, and even showed her screenshots of more user-friendly third party launchers. She opted to keep the default launcher, and it's been smooth sailing since. (I also installed Firefox and uBlock Origin on it.)

My mom's used one for years now, and seems content with it.

I bought my mom an ipad and a flip phone because of this. She much prefers the bigger text on the ipad anyway.

> It's stuff like this that leads people to just "give up" and buy an expensive Apple device.

Yes.

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