genuinely curious as to why people choose that brand, are alternatives really that bad?
As I see it:
- you pay for the hardware and software, which is fine, but
- if you want to upgrade the OS, you have to pay once again, but this doesn’t work if your hardware model stops being supported. Why pay for something with a limited life expectancy?
- you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it
- software is made specifically to be only compatible within their ecosystem. If you want to build up on existing software and hardware, you either stay in their system and keep paying them or start anew with a freer alternative.
- I find it ridiculous they use fancy names to name even their support staff instead of just calling it support staff. Why make things complicated?
- I don’t understand why they use pentalobe screws instead or regular ones (with a line or a cross section)
Feel free to correct me, I may be misguided.
I was an Apple fanboy for years with the whole iphone, ipad, airpods setup too. Integration is pretty nice but I started getting into privacy.
Now I use grapheneos on my pixel, arch on my thinkpad, and selfhost my stuff. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Yes, it’s not as seemless as apple but I have alternatives for everything and they still sync nicely. It’s not a setup for everybody but it’s a good one if you want to own your data.
There’s a market for the smallest niche. The most important thing is that you are happy with the setup you’re running. It doesn’t matter if it is Android, iOS, Mac OS, Windows, Linux… if it works for you it’s good. Sadly people still fight about what’s better - especially when it comes to phones. And I was part of that fight. But from todays standpoint it just doesn’t make any sense. Use what suits you.
I mean I’m still a part of the fight as well because I advocate for privacy in our world of diminishing rights. Using a bloated android os isn’t really privacy respecting and even though apple is better than your most bloated samsung, it still isn’t as good as a degoogled phone. I still have an inherent bias for Androids because of so much more freedom.
However, I agree with you. We’re a small niche, most people just want shit to work and at that point this doesn’t even matter.
I absolutely respect your effort regarding privacy! I honestly don’t want to know how much data about me is collected by companies monitoring the internet even though I barely post anything on social media. And I believe most people - me included - are just too lazy to really take care of their own (internet) privacy and/or think „I have nothing to hide anyways“.
Anyways what I was trying to say is that the fight shouldn’t exist. Everyone should use what they want without having to argue why this or that is better or not.