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Comment by my3681 | Hacker News Reader

I develop apps for both major mobile platforms, and when I speak with designers and artists about Android and iOS, they overwhelmingly prefer iOS. Since they use iOS devices themselves, it is their go to platform. It is almost always the one they want to work with.

Oddly, when I ask them why, the answers are mostly qualitative. It has nothing to do with "reaching the most people" or "getting exposure". It's a simple matter of taste. Designers tend to choose iOS products because they identify with them. They see Apple as an institution that they would enjoy being a part of in some way. Almost all the designers I know that are worth their salt use and love their macs for working in Photoshop and Illustrator, so it naturally follows that they prefer the iOS platform, regardless of numbers and market share.

Admittedly, my sample size is only around 50 or so, but this has been my experience.

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Sounds akin to developers picking the companies they work for based on the programming languages/tech stacks they get to work with.

I can definitely sympathize.

Glad you said that. Apple prepositioned itself as a design oriented company something that designers associate with. Something being easy is highly subjective.

As a designer this is exactly why.

No android phone nor interface is close to the level of what Apple is putting out - both from an experience and product standpoint. This is also the same exact same reason why I purchase all apple products.

I really don't understand the argument of "You're paying more for a lesser product when you buy Apple". Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm buying an Apple product. I'm buying it because of the UX, because of the way the phone feels in my hand, because of the way the keys feel on the keyboard when I press them down, because of how great the applications look and feel when I use them.

If android came out with something that looked and felt great I would certainly consider using it. In fact, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy S3 several years ago when it first came out. The phone was absolute garbage - plastic bevels still had molding pieces around the edges, the unnecessary bloatware (which would have been fine if it was remotely useful) was very poorly designed, and overall the phone felt very light and cheap.

> Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm buying an Apple product.

The funny thing is, that's kind of a myth, particularly in phone land. The A7 (the 5S's SoC) had pretty much class-leading performance when it came out, except in highly parallel tasks, and to a large extent it _still does_.

That's not really surprising, since a large portion of mobile developers probably became mobile developers specifically because of what Apple was doing in iOS.

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