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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, but as a software guy I disagree entirely on the hardware/software side. I'd much rather have a 4s running ICS than one of the others running iOS, and I'd much rather have my MBP run Linux than even OSX (stupid EFI...). Granted, I have different tastes and needs than most, but I view Apple products not as the OS "in a pretty box", as Jobs put it, but rather as a pretty box with a good-not-great OS in it.

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Correct me if I'm wrong but you're not disagreeing the conclusion that software is more important, you're just arguing the details as to which software is superior.

If I could mix and match here is what I'd take:

Software: iOS

Hardware: Nokia

Customer Service: Apple

Ecosystem: Amazon

Carrier: none of the above (the US sucks so bad...)

That's basically right. Apple makes fantastic hardware. None of the other manufacturers come close on design and execution. As far as software goes, I'm more concerned about what I can do with it than the polish.

I'm curious as to why you would prefer a Nokia handset to an Apple one. I've found their designs to be uninspiring.

If I had to guess, it's because Nokia's hardware could generally survive a nuclear explosion at ground zero and emerge unscathed.

All my Nokia phones still work or should work, (Nokia 5110 from 1999, Nokia 5125 from 2001, Nokia 1100 from 2004, Nokia 5200 from 2007, Nokia N86 from 2009).

My carrier had to convince me to leave my 5125 as they were turning off the analog service (it's now used as an alarm clock), and I still use the 1100 sometimes.

However, I finally switched (partways) to Samsung, entirely due to the software (I wanted an Android phone), even though my N86 is better built and has a better camera (and hardware camera button, which I prefer).

Pretty much every review of the N9/Lumia series has mentioned the superior hardware. My main criticism of the 4/4S edges are on this page somewhere.

I don't claim any special experience here, Samsung, HTC and Motorola can all make really swell phones and it's hard to blame them when Verizon forces them to put a juice hogging 45 nm LTE chip in all their top end phones. Fujitsu phones are gorgeous but not widely reviewed in the English tech blogosphere.

I agree with the Linux running on a MBP part... indeed, I'm planning to do so when I buy my MBP in a few months. However, I do recognize that I'm not the typical use case for a person using this device, spending most of my time in the command line, etc. For actually developing something, there's a much better ecosystem running linux.

On the other hand, I'd take iOS running on, say, the Galaxy Nexus. If I jailbreak iOS, I can easily run iSSH, install inetutils, vim, etc, and come halfway to an amazing development device with access to the whole app ecosystem. For me, that's the dealbreaker (or maker, depending on the perspective.)

I jailbroke my 3gs a couple years ago with the same idea in mind. A development platform it is not. I liked the idea of being able to connect to a server from the bus and restart a service or what have you, but for the frustration involved it's just not worth it. I'd far rather haul an Air around and tether it to my phone.

I'll disagree on this point. I've used my 3GS for two years, and it served well as a quick and dirty way to develop in... unusual places. I'm not even talking about SSHing into another computer; just to localhost, quickly using vi to change a file, then running a git commit is ridiculously convenient for someone who doesn't own an Air and doesn't want to lug his laptop around. The only problem, really, is the speed, which I agree isn't the fastest, but the iPhone 4 is really usable. When I upgrade to the 4S in a year or so, it'll probably be ready for most stuff I want to do in a pinch.

Same. I'd rather have a MBP running Win XP even.

In fact, I have an 8-10 year old Dell laptop and a MBP bought within the last year or two. I planned to make the switch but I've kept using the old Dell and the MBP sits at home as a net-browsing machine for my wife.

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