As far as your second point, well… I guess that’s precisely the attitude I was addressing. I definitely don’t agree that a phone brand is as strong an indicator of personality traits as the example you offer. If I was say, hiring a UI designer, I’d perhaps care about their choice of OS. For relationships, I don’t really care if they’re passionate about mobile phones. I understand that most of us on HN are keyed in to tech and UI. The average person, though, sees a phone as a utilitarian item, and owns one as a means to accomplish specific tasks. That way of thinking is like, if someone was a mechanic and thought poorly of a someone they met because they drove a Ford instead of a Mazda and the mechanic believed Mazda had more elegant engine designs.
iPhones: so exclusive that hordes of unemployed teenagers have them.
> I’ve had a couple girlfriends in their 40s mildly judge me negatively for having an Android phone […]
I have an iPhone but don't tie it into Apple services so every fellow iPhone users have green-bubble interactions with me. :)
Over the years/decades I've lived through ICQ, MSN Messenger, BBM, and probably some other proprietary systems. I've managed to avoid tying into any of them so far.
That’s ridiculous!