Asklemmy

I am on android rn but at least in europe, apple is forced to allow 3rd party appstores soon which was the main dealbreaker for me. Their ui + cross device integration is very nice. Hopefully they are going to release a foldable soon! Handwriting apps are much more polished on iPads than on Android.

My employer (a mid-sized tech company) had a policy that employees could access corporate Slack, email, etc. from personal iPhones but not personal Android phones. I think it was for security reasons.

I was using Android, but I needed mobile phone access for on-call shifts. The company gave me a choice of either replacing my Android with an iPhone (and they would partially reimburse the cost); or, they would issue me a corporate iPhone, and I'd have to carry both phones when I was on-call. I picked the first option and switched to iPhone.

I got frustrated by buggy behavior from Android in general. Even with Google software (Android Auto), it wasn’t uncommon for functionality to break after updates.

I’ll take consistency over more (but buggier) features. Quality over quantity.

Oh, and the cinematic mode was a game changer for this Vidiot.

Here in Japan iPhones are massively popular, more than in most other markets. I just Googled it: iPhones are 67%, Android 33%. That's crazy.

The reasons are: people think they're stylish/cool (in Japan this is SUPER important), they think they must be good because they're expensive, and they think Android is 'scary' because they've never used it before. They literally don't know that Android does everything iOS does, usually better/with more customisation, and that it offers way more control (you can make Android even more simple and basic than iOS if you tinker a bit).

To be honest, even talking about places other than Japan, 98% of people probably have never even stopped to think why they're on either Android/iOS - it's only the 2% of people like us who talk about it.

It is funny though that iPhone users here in Japan have so little idea about why their phones aren't working properly, and have to make actual reservations to have a 'genius' look at their phone and fix it for them. Usually it's just clearing cache or something. They also pay literal hundreds of dollars to have their data transferred over when they get a new iPhone, unaware that cloud storage is capable of doing all of this for you for free.

I think it’s easier and more reliable

Ironically, I just buy whatever’s cheaper lol. That was android for a few phones, and I was happy as a clam. Then the time came for an upgrade, and my carrier had a crazy sale for the previous year’s iphone. So I gave it a shot.

Still happy as a clam lol. I think of myself as being very “techy”, I use linux, etc., but I really don’t need my phone to do anything special. I use like 6 apps that are all multi platform. Very little about my flow changed.

I prefer the keyboard on android actually, and I like firefox on android better than safari. But everything else is pretty much fine. I’d be okay going iphone again, or back to android. Whatever’s cheaper when the time comes.

The ecosystem. (For better or worse.)

I prefer Android but the ability to do things such as use my AirPods on multiple Macs, iPhones, and iPads is very convenient. Ditto for things like Apple TV and HomeKit (though I use Home Assistant to control my HomeKit devices).

Other things:

• Hardware has a longer useful life (Android phone manufacturers "commit" to n years of updates, but the timing of releases is slow and usually limited to 3 years, at most.) There are still iPhone 6 devices in the wild running the latest version of iOS.

• Standardized hardware and consistently updated software results in more and better apps.

In short: iPhone is an appliance but an Android smartphone is/can be a pocket computer with greater flexibility.

YMMV

EDIT: Also, my wife and kids use iPhone. When I used an Android phone, I had them all install signal so we communicate securely. With iPhone, that's built in.

I personally wouldn't voluntarily use Apple products myself, but I have people close to me that buy iPhone because they think that's the best smartphone they can buy. There are some truths to it from the standpoints of warranty policies, technologies, privacy policies, update policies, securities, and reputations.

For me, a big one is integration with email / calendar / contacts services that aren't Google. I don't know where Google dropped the ball here - Android was originally amazing for this kind of thing - but at some point they started bolting a lot of features specifically on top of Google accounts, and out of the box Android doesn't even understand how to sync with CalDAV / CardDAV. So if I want my Nextcloud stuff to work at all I need to go and install a third party app. The third party app works great (I happily used DAVx5 for many years), but it's ridiculous when iOS has all that integration officially supported and available straight out of the box. And it even does clever things, like suggesting contact details it learns from my (Fastmail) email. Android has that stuff, but it is completely on the cloud, and it only works if you give everything to Google.

More reliability, more polished OS and longer support cycle.