Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

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> I feel bad for the guy and all the Apple users constantly sharing stories of being mistreated and abused. Stop giving these companies your money and consent.

Here's a challenge: walk into a store and attempt to buy a smartphone that is not iPhone or Android.

This is the situation that consumers face. Some alternatives exist, but most consumers are completely unaware of them, because the alternatives have no advertising budget or retail presence.

I think it's quite similar to the political duopoly. Third parties exist, but they have no advertising budget, and moreover, in a Catch-22 situation, they get little or no news coverage, precisely because they have no advertising budget, and thus the news media considers them "not viable." That's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Actually the same situation exists in tech: Apple and Google get huge amounts of free news coverage in addition to their paid advertising. The media appears to feel no obligation to help people escape from duopolies; guess who pays for their advertising...

Yes, the phone market is bad. But, you know you don't have to do everything in a phone, right?

Want to take pictures? Use a camera. If it somehow auto updates your photos are still on an SD card.

I get convenience has led everyone to expect their phone to do everything for them, but it's not working. When you're in a pinch you will go to a 7-Eleven and grab food, but everyone would agree that buying everything there instead of real groceries is a terrible strategy. Just because something is convenient doesn't mean it's good.

> I get convenience has led everyone to expect their phone to do everything for them, but it's not working.

It's mostly working, though. For every story of someone experencing a severe problem, there are millions of non-stories of people not experiencing the problem.

Inconveniencing yourself every day just to avoid the rare situation is not necessarily a great life strategy. Furthermore, most consumers are not as aware of these problem cases as we are. They don't expect the worst until it's too late.

Admittedly, failing to back up is just dumb, and everyone should know that by now. On the other hand, nobody should be expecting that a software update will kill their passcode.

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