He asks, in a FOSS community.
Sideloading apps, tons more choices (price range, design, manufacturer, specs), ‘more’ control, used to Android environment
This is the biggest reason for me. Though I rarely look further than F-Droid for anything.
I don’t really pay attention to apple news but didn’t the EU force them to allow sideloading a little bit after the whole usbc thing
Until that happened, I’ll hold on my doubts
I like my phone, I have more control over it, I like that it’s not made in ways to punish me for fixing it, I don’t trust Apple, and it cost 300$ instead of costing more than my current car
There’s no reason for me to switch. It would be going to a worse product in my opinion. I only use phones that can run lineageOS or another custom rom on it now, and have been doing so for the past 6 or so years.
I don’t like how restrictive the apple ecosystem is. I have an ipad because the android equivalents just weren’t doing the job, but use android and linux for my daily drivers. I feel like the adblockers aren’t effective, and I can’t sideload apps.
Yeah me too. What I expect from my iPad is less demanding than what I expect of my phone. All I wanted from my iPad was draw, read comics, and watch videos. But, experience even just finding a calculator app that wasn’t trying to sign me up for a subscription was terrible. Then the file system experience was bad to use with a device that wasn’t a Mac. Then finding Foss apps was a pain. So as a pure media consumption device that will get long term updates I love the iPad, but as a phone it’s a no. At least until side loading arrives, and if an f-droid quality Foss option is offered too.
Ton of paid apps + no reason to switch + sideloading + don’t like or trust apple
Apple controls what may be installed on iphones with an iron fist. Did you know there is only one option for a web browser? Chrome, Firefox, and other apparent alternatives are actually re-skinned Safari. They don’t want to allow real competition to their own browser. This is certainly not the only case where they use app store approval powers to block competition.
Plus Apple takes 15-30% of every transaction on iphones. That includes payments in the app store, and also in-app purchases. Sure they have to fund the store, but given that Apple has an absolute monopoly over iphone app distribution this seems predatory to me.
Apple is anticompetitive, and seems to have little regard for their responsibility as a platform provider to allow application diversity to flourish.
So Google has a similar app store approval process, and takes basically the same percentage from transactions. But they are much more generous in what they allow in their store in terms of competing apps. And most importantly, Google does not have a monopoly on Android app distribution. You don’t need to do any jailbreaking to set up F-Droid, or to install apps from the web.
It’s true that the vast majority of Android users use Google’s app store. And I think that Google taking a cut of in-app purchases is also predatory. Apps should be able to not use Google Pay, and to not pay Google a cut. But the fact that there are other options puts a limit on how much Google can block competition, and gives some option for publishers to avoid that 15-30% cut.
I don’t want to switch to something that costs more and that I like less?
Why would I?
I am so goddamn bad at using the apple UX
I feel like an old man using an iPhone when a family member hands me once and asks me to fix something
The lack of consistently in how Apple devices work, as hey truly feel like a black box where anything beyond basic functionality is held back from the user.
Not having any restricts placed on me as to what software I can install on my devices. Seriously, not allowing sideloading is ridiculous in 2023.
No sidelong, easier rooting (sometimes), price, etc
Lack of customization, lack of options, lack of compatibility.
With iPhones you choose from iPhone 1, 2, 3, or 4. They’re all the same, and frankly they all suck. They’re overpriced and the charger always breaks.
The lack of LDAC bluetooth and native FLAC playback support is a deal breaker for me.
Right now I’m using a custom ROM, ~10 magisk modules, 2 Xposed modules and a handful of other things that require root… My phone is almost 5 years old and I am on the latest Android version with no signs of community support stopping. Half my apps are open source, and the paid, proprietary ones are actually affordable hobby projects (and not VC backed startups) with one time payments and worth the price.
I can load up a non-Android Linux distro on it and everything except the camera will work. Mainline kernel, too.
And I didn’t need to take out a loan to buy it.
