I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their income on Apple products; it's almost like their lives are ruled by the status they feel an iPhone brings (and the consequential sacrificial purchasing).
It likely varies by area and average income, here it's almost an inverse correlation - the less-well off kids at school tend to have parents on iPhones and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for them.
I’m astounded by the pervasiveness of this meme, given its origins are really from a Mac vs PC internet flame war era that I would like to think we’ve moved past.
I’m astounded by the fact that one can imply with a straight face no less that over half the market are status-driven dorks that have no legitimate reason to use an iPhone over an Android phone, the obviously superior for all people in all circumstances choice used by the enlightened few that aren’t concerned with such banal things as social status.
Occam’s razor would imply that this view is perhaps wrong and that you’re just missing something.
I use an iPhone for a lot of reasons. One of these is that I’m legally blind. For my purposes, accessibility features on iOS easily run rings around those on Android. Full stop. Arguing against that is ridiculous. Sectioning me out and saying “I wasn’t talking about you@ because disability is a sacred cow is ridiculous.
Just please don’t make these conversations so charged with this tired old rhetoric that simultaneously chastises such a wide group for imagined status-seeking in a way that simultaneously ties your own (non-iPhone) choice in to an imagined desirable personality trait.
People just like to think they're special "thinking out of the box" rebels because they use android when the equivalent android phone costs the same as an iphone. There's very little price difference between the models for the main brands (you can off course find cheaper alternatives with their own issues) but if you get an iphone and a samsung side by side odds are they're at the same price range.
And as a professional developer that uses a mac (that is by far the best bang for the buck if you're not into gaming) it just makes sense to pick an iphone instead of an android due to the ecosystem value. I doubt many people in developed countries care that much about the fact that you use an apple device or not, that's the kind of shit you'd expect from developing nations like Brazil (where I'm from), where they do remain a status symbol mostly because the population in general is still pretty poor.
> And it's not clear to me how using a MacBook would influence your phone choice.
The same reason you use Chrome and then also Google Maps and Gmail. Just swap a Mac with Chrome and an iPhone with Gmail.
There are lots of little features like being able to copy on my iPhone and then it’s saved into a shared clipboard so that I can paste into my Mac. Those kinds of things (there are many, many others and you can look them up for yourself) are why someone would be influenced to choose an iPhone if they are using a Mac.
As an aside I think most users across all platforms use Google’s ecosystem but I would expect Apple users to use it less than others since Apple provides good enough alternatives such as Safari, Apple Maps, iCloud, etc.
> As an aside I think most users across all platforms use Google’s ecosystem
Yeah this is what I was thinking. Apple users will tend to use two ecosystems instead of one.
Personally, I wouldn't even think about my laptop when choosing a phone. But I would think about the fact that I use several Google services and I'd rather not duplicate them with Mac accounts/apps.
Someone else mentioned the clipboard sync (which is amazingly handy), but it goes so far as to the iPhone camera showing up across the macOS as both a document scanner as well as a webcam (which blows the pants off of any USB webcam on the market), and things like being able to cast your screen from your iPhone to a Mac's display.
Now I'm sure all of these things are possible on other platforms using extra software but in the ecosystem it's all zero setup, instantly integrated and quite reliable.
From my world experience, this is a pure Americanism. And Americans broadly seem to care a more about status than the other 95% of the worlds population.
go to latin america. I bought a phone for a girl awhile back while I was there. she literally chose a used 3 year old iphone over a brand new android that costs more. I even showed her that the secs on the android were objectively better.
There's nothing bang for your buck about apple laptops. I can get a pc laptop for half the price and arguably better quality.
It is true about phones though, especially when you consider how badly all the big brands except apple and Google add unremovable money making spam apps to their phones.
Surface laptops are priced pretty well on par with apple for a worse screen, quality, and battery life.
Literally no other laptop provides a competitive battery life, screen or build even compared to the surface. I literally just bought a new laptop 3 months ago, and almost zero windows laptops were reasonably competitive with the MacBook for a dev.
Could just be because I have a powerful gaming PC, but I definitely found that windows laptops did not meet up to a decent standard.
If you as a consumer buy a nice HP Spectre, it will be more than an equivalent MacBook barring a sale or clearance. I buy 10,000 at a time, and get about 30% off.
A 15" MBA with the max 24GB RAM and a 1TB drive would cost $2100. Note the Zenbook is not on sale, has a 120Hz HiDPI OLED display and aluminum chassis.
Which PC laptop is half the price of, say, a MacBook Air and has better or even similar performance, battery life, input devices…? Keep in mind that you're talking about a $500-$600 price point here.
I don't know if you meant to imply that a Macbook Air starts at $500-600, but if you did then you'd be incorrect based on https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/.
In any case, I think the switch from Intel to ARM makes any such comparisons meaningless until we start seeing more ARM-based laptops in the same niche.
They meant if the person was right, the PC would have to cost $500-600. A PC laptop being in that price range and equal or better than a MacBook Air is a fantasy.
ARM and Intel laptops are directly comparable because you can compare what people can do them.
Not all ARM processors are created equal, Apple's are superior in iPhones and laptops, there's no reason to expect that to change in the near future.
I don't know what niche you're referring to. Apple Silicon are the sole occupants of a "niche," delivering high performance with excellent processing per Watt. When shopping for a laptop, there's nothing unfair about comparing ones with different processor architectures when they all can run the software needed.
Plenty of people don't care about how long you can run off the battery or processing per Watt in general, just performance. For those people, there are x86 laptops that can outperform Apple's ARM-based laptops (not to mention having discrete GPI options).
> I don't know what niche you're referring to. Apple Silicon are the sole occupants of a "niche," delivering high performance with excellent processing per Watt.
You clearly do know what niche I'm referring to, since you just described it. Like you say: Apple's laptops are the sole occupants of their niche, so what would you even compare against? I'm sure there are other ARM chips out there with comparable or better "performance" per Watt, but Apple Silicon's pretty unique right now in maximizing the "performance" half of that equation instead of minimizing the "per Watt" half.
> When shopping for a laptop, there's nothing unfair about comparing ones with different processor architectures when they all can run the software needed.
I never said it was "unfair". I said it was meaningless - because it is. There are myriad metrics by which one could evaluate "performance" (per Watt or otherwise), and Apple Silicon doesn't necessarily win at all of them.
When other manufacturers start putting out ARM laptops targeting the same (or at least remotely similar) performance metrics as a Macbook targets, then there'd be a worthwhile discussion to be had.
What are these x86 laptops that are the same size and price range of an Air or MBP that outperform the M2s in processing power that doesn't involve GPU?
Almost all the benchmarks out there of similarly sized laptops have the M2s (and previously had the M1s) topping the charts in single and multi threaded workloads.
It isn’t, I work as a developer and most developers have no use for a GPU unless you’re doing machine learning or gaming. For this case Macs are really hard to beat, especially given the UNIX like environment.
> It isn’t, I work as a developer and most developers have no use for a GPU unless you’re doing machine learning or gaming.
Okay, well
1. Not every Macbook user is a developer
2. Not every developer has no use for a GPU
If we're going to make comparisons about performance requirements for a specific subset of a specific subset of users, then let's be explicit about that. Otherwise, arbitrarily ignoring a rather substantial contributor to overall performance is indeed arbitrary.
It looks like the Razer Blade 16, with a i9-13950HX can beat the fastest MacBook Pro and is cheaper than that model.
I didn't mention size and don't know how they compare. Size comparisons are largely related to processing per Watt because others need bigger heat pipes and fans than the Macs.
I'm basically an Apple guy and don't pay tons of attention to all the alternatives, I just recognize the Apple products are not the right choice for everyone.
That article's Geekbench single core score for the Mac is substantially worse than what's on the chart while their multi-core score is somewhat better [0]. I don't know what the averages are for the Razer Blade 16, some scores are higher than the M2 Max (especially multi-core), some are lower [1].
That article also compares models with more expensive add-ons, a lot of that higher Razer price is probably from the 4090. The Blade 16 price starts at $2,699 (i9-13950HX, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 4060, 16" 240Hz QHD+). For an MBP with an M2 Max, the 14-inch starts at $3,099 and the 16-inch at $3,499. Those Macs have 32GB RAM and Razer charges +$600 for that much but the Blade has RAM slots, you can buy another 16GB for ~$50. Razer also charges a lot for an upgraded SSD (and absurd +$1,600 for 2TB instead of 1TB) but that is also replaceable at a much more affordable price. There's also a second M2 slot available so you can add storage without replacing the original drive.
Edit: the SSD upgrade cost is so high because they make you get other upgrades with it (a 4090 and 32GB RAM).
Only if you don’t care about screen, battery life or user interface.
Caveat. If windows matters, or you’re talking about the generation of defective MacBooks with a bad keyboard, I’d concede that a top of the line HP, Dell or Lenovo is a better choice.
You are out of touch, M1/M2 runs circles around any other silicon and the pro line has great design and usage for convenience built in.
The solid resale price is the proof as no windows device is worth anything used.
It's not a meme in poorer countries. At least not in those that I am familiar with. Quite a few iPhone users I know use it as a status symbol, many have bought it in credit and paid out over the next several years with a significant chunk of their modest incomes (because they couldn't have acquired one any other way). Just in time to get the next model. Eh, whatever, at least it's more useful than expensive clothing.
This comment came over as quite aggressive to me, and, browsing your new account history, I found a similar tone in other comments. As you are new here, I would urge you to read the HN guidelines :
Maybe the dude they responded to should avoid aggressive, sweeping generalizations about people who like a different phone than them?
I buy iPhone for a lot of reasons, 0 of which are “status”. I had no idea there was even any status. The flagship devices are all within a couple hundred bucks of each other.
No, the comment you’re replying to is actually a bit rightfully offended by the casually offensive remarks being dropped by the grandparent.
The problem is fundamentally that Android users drop this microaggression all the time about how apple users are brainless sheep, who don’t have any sense and just let status drive all their purchases, and don’t even see it as offensive.
amd fanboys do the same thing with nvidia users, insisting that “mindshare” is somehow the sole reason that AMD lost ground over the years and that nvidia customers are all dumb brainless sheep too.
It’s actually quite offensive and extremely pervasive, and if you dare call it out you get people like you tut-tutting about how offensive it is to be pointing out your offensiveness.
The problem isn’t the indignant reply, that’s just human nature, the problem is the person who dropped yet another “all apple users are status-chasing sheep” thought-terminating cliche. That’s offensive and pervasive and really should stop especially here of all places. It needs to be said and you are in the wrong for shouting down the people trying to say it.
Again, I know that it’s so absolutely normalized and pervasive that android/AMD people probably don’t see “[other brand] users are brainless sheep” as being offensive, but it is. Like that’s not even a dog whistle, you’re just saying it right out loud. You’re telling a forum full of the general public that a good number of them are brainless, and you’ve been doing it for so many years that you don’t even see why that’s wrong.
MacBooks, iPhones, and nvidia cards are all quite good products and have many many things going for them, there is absolutely no call to be insulting by suggesting that people haven’t done any research because they chose a different product for their needs.
Like how poorly socialized are people that they think calling other people “brainless” to their faces isn’t offensive, or to tut-tut at other people for being upset about such conduct? Especially when here of all places people have most definitely considered the technical merit of the alternatives.
Geeze I rarely bother to go read people's post histories here unless they strike me as uniquely insightful but yours inspired me to go read his comments and dude looks like a troll account who just came on here to cause flamewars and troll. All of his comments are argumentative.
Only half of all people being status-driven in their average purchases of visible accessories seems like a very low Bayesian prior to me in general. I think actually the meme is wrong because most people spending money on an Android phone in the US also basing it on a different form of status, kinda like "I don't own a TV" status. Most of the rest are probably making their choice based on pure cost basis (which can go either way based on resell / used market being better on iPhone).
I would believe that only a small fraction of people are making their phone purchase choice on an axis other than status or price (like you).
> I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their income on Apple products
I don't know about other people, but I went iPhone specifically for the value/$. Got a used iPhone SE 2020 for $150 in late 2021, and expect to use it for 5+ years. I seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there that could get even close to that.
It really helps that Apple's CPU/SoC is substantially superior to what everyone else uses, so older iPhones tend to feel snappier. Between that and Apple's clearly superior OS support, I don't know why value shoppers who don't want to install their own firmware would go with Android.
You must have gone without security or other OS updates then, which I would consider a deal breaker with a phone. Google only recently extended the Pixel OS support timeline to be on par with Android.
> Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're important to you, that's fair.
Hardware devices with embedded software couldn't get updates (or was a difficult job so didn't happen) until somewhat recently. It is unfortunate that the ability to do updates is used as a crutch to ship faulty software that then needs updates. A phone shouldn't ever need an update in its lifetime if it was properly built in the first place.
I only recently stopped using my Motorola cellphone from 2005 (only because they decommissioned the towers). It never received any update in 17 years. It also never needed any.
I would like to buy devices with that level of quality today.
Well, yeah, and I'd like a pony. The main issue is security updates. I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data on your 2005 Motorola.
> I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data
For anyone who has done any serious threat modeling exercises would never ever do that from a 2023 phone (I'm fully aware many people do it regardless).w
Yet somehow millions of people do, and I'm not aware of a single banking app breach caused by a zero-day device flaw.
This advice to not use a 2023 phone is just plain silly. I'm not saying it's 100% locked down, but neither is going to a bank branch and talking to someone in person.
If security is a concern, getting a newer Pixel and installing GrapheneOS is your best bet. It's still not perfect and nothing beats just not having a cell phone, but that's a choice very few are okay with today.
The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
Ah yes, android is perfectly secure as long as you install an aftermarket os, and then don’t install google services or any android application which uses google services (all of them).
Or you could just use the brand that gives 6-7 years of OS updates and 10+ years of security updates out of the box…
I would 100% use iOS if I preferred to keep a stock OS and needed those apps.
I just don't need that in a phone and am totally fine with the limitations of a degoogled device.
I don't recommend that for most people. I was simply responding to a question of what device to consider with regards to privacy/security. I even tried to include caveats that it isn't right for everyone and had real tradeoffs.
> If security is a concern, getting a newer Pixel and installing GrapheneOS is your best bet. It's still not perfect and nothing beats just not having a cell phone, but that's a choice very few are okay with today.
> The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
Not sure how I could have been more clear here, I literally started by saying "if security is a concern". I stand by that, if security is a concern I would not use an iPhone or stock Android. I also stand by the assumption that for most people security isn't a concern.
So yes, I wouldn't recommend graphene for most people but I would recommend it to anyone both concerned about security and willing to sacrifice some functionality and convenience (both caveats in my original post).
You make it sound as though I changed my recommendation or story half way through. If that's your opinion, please do me a favor and point out specifically where I walked it back or contradicted myself.
What about the Exynos RCE bugs? Now that they are patched they are secure again or how is this supposed to work? What about the intentional backdoor unearthed in the pixel phone (the sim swap thingy)? Who was that for?
My problem is, as a user, whose expertise is not 100% security, how can a layman decide which device to trust? Trust the neighbor, trust the expert who thinks is an expert, but doesn't see his own limitations, trust the newspapers parroting whatever they find (or their security advisor), trust the marmots or trust the looks, because you don't know what the silicon does. You might know one domain, but not multiple ones, like you might know the IT domain, but doesn't know the underlying physics domain, so you might think the phone is secure in the IT domain, but since you don't know jackshit about the physics, you have to again rely on someone's advice.
The iPhone is locked down tight, even security experts have complained in the past because analysing the core internals is cumbersome. But that's a double edged sword, when you can't even get basic info about phone's status without resorting to some hacking shenanigans.
Any way to know your firmware has not changed? How come there are zero tools for the layman to verify the status of his device? You don't know whether your usb's firmware is intact, whether your motherboard is a-ok and the list goes on.
According to newspapers, it is/was the panacea of security (iPhone), yet sec bugs after sec bugs are coming out all the time. You don't even have complete control over the phone, since the software switches (like wifi) are not actually disabling the wifi circuitry.
How come banks are sitting on ancient systems and are seemingly fine?
Should you trust zerodium's bounty prices, should you trust exploit brokers? (they ought to see what's an emmentaler right?)
Encrypted secure phones? Look how many criminals got caught, by putting their trust blindly into something, that someone parroted about how secure that is.
GrapheneOS says they are secure, but where are tools that show you that yes we do this and that and that solves these kinds of attacks, thwarted these attacks in the past, demonstrated?
Should you consider Mikko's advice. Use a phone that is made by a country, whose intelligence agency is not a threat to you? But how do you know that a phone, which is made in X country is actually controlled by that country's IA? And how do you know which IA is not a threat to you? :DDDDD Do you even have to fear against a nation state's capabilities or since they have unimited budget you are fucked when somehow get in their crosshairs?
It's like flipping a coin, putting your trust into someone's solution blindly.
Hardware devices with embedded software used to be air-gapped.
As soon as phones got Bluetooth, you got Nokia Bluetooth viruses that would spread via public transit, and you had to go to a service center to fix it since it wasn't designed to be updated.
Even in the days of "software was complete on launch", security was absolutely abysmal and we just relied on most people being honest.
Yeah, saying "embedded software used to be complete and final back in the day" is such a rose-colored glasses take. When I was a kid we could occasionally pick up car phone (that's what we called cell phones back then) conversations by changing to a particular channel on the TV.
The pixel 6a will get 3 years of updates and 5 years of security updates. On a phone that was released 12 months ago.
So it hasn’t been tested yet. Plenty of time for google to renege on that.
The Pixel 6a is at least a cheaper phone. But the Pixel 7 are flagship prices for the same support.
iPhones have been getting this level of updates since almost day one. The last iPhone I ran into the ground was a 6 and that had 5 years of OS updates. iOS 8 through 12.
My current XR has been getting updates for almost 5 years and will get iOS 17. So at least 6 years of updates?
When I got my last Pixel Google were giving 3 years of security updates. I bought it one year after release. For an average consumer doing the same thing they would have had an unsecure doorstop with very low resale value after two years. Should be criminal.
I installed some ROM and kept it alive (not by far as secure as using an iPhone, of course).
This is exactly why I own an iPhone. I don't even personally like apple as a company. I don't like Mac computers. There are things that really irritate me about iPhones, but I use them anyway because of how long they get updates for.
My son's now 4 year old Samsung S10-5G (my old phone) is still getting updated. It is a flagship phone, the first with 5G - will be interesting to see how long they do it.
Google and Samsung appear to be on the same page; I think the front runners in the Android world are a lot better than some would like to give them credit for.
The phones do stop working properly, e.g. unicode doesn't work, and unsupported android OS's aren't no longer developed, not to mention security updates.
It's risky, especially in todays world where financial information is stored endlessly on a cell phone. 5 years+ for iphones make a very nice deprecation curve / alongside a viable resell market. It's nice to sell a 2yr old iphone for 70-80% of it's purchase price and then buy a new one and not have to worry about anything for another 5 years.
If you only buy devices with LineageOS support, you can continue to get updates for a very long time. I would not want to be at the mercy of the manufacturer for the software.
I might be one of those value shoppers; I usually buy the "Pixel .a" version of the oldest available generation when it's time for replacement (I'm currently on a Pixel 4a). I like it. I used to have an iPhone, but I prefer the "feel" of Andriod-on-Pixel, but I don't know how to describe it. Less heavy-handed maybe? More minimalistic?
I don't need the fastest, most powerful SoC. I don't need the best, super fast display. The battery life on my 4a is enough for my needs. People get way too religious about this.
Your "usually" is doing a lot there. You bought the second ever "a", so you've done it once?
I understand your preference though, I've used google's phones (Nexus then Pixel) for about a decade. They have the benefit of having one fewer cooks in the kitchen. Any other brand has to adjust to whatever dumb thing Google has done to copy iPhone in each new OS release, and then also add their own layer on top of that.
My son uses my old S10-5G (the world's first premier 5G phone, released in mid 2019 - ages ahead of Apple), and it's still regularly receiving security updates.
> I seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there that could get even close to that.
I don't see the 2020 SE getting software upgrades for much longer, it's already the bottom of the barrel for iOS17, so I guess you're OK to forgo those for a while ?
If your phone needs are low enough you can get by with the SE in 2026, buying a Gakaxy A series today would totally fit the bill, and you probably could get one new at the same price and way cheaper used.
Fair point. Super critical security updates could go on, while official OS support is dead.
To note, iOS doesn't allow alternative browsers so Safari will also be stuck in time and there will be no option to get any modern engine on the device (I'm not even sure you could get one through jailbreaking, that would be a lot of porting efforts for virtually no one on the market)
I resurrected a third gen iPad a few weeks ago for no reason, and the most interesting part was it couldn't get past Cloudflare's browser check, so couldn't even see some of simpler and primitive sites on the web.
Macs are pretty much in the same boat. I have a couple 2015 models. Can’t get the latest major OS update. But they get updates and I expect I’ll be able to continue using them as primarily browsers for quite some time.
>I seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there that could get even close to that.
It's probably because you didn't really do any research into it. A $100 or less Pixel 4a released in 2020 will easily last 5+ years if you take care of it.
> It's probably because you didn't really do any research into it. A $100 or less Pixel 4a released in 2020 will easily last 5+ years if you take care of it.
I'm not optimizing for years alive in retirement; instead, it's years of active, healthy life.
Similarly, I don't just care about years of software support in a phone - it's important how long the phone feels like it's still a snappy, responsive phone. I just don't have a lot of confidence that I'd feel that way about the Pixel 4a in 2027.
In addition to the Pixel 4a I also have an iPhone X and in 2023 you can really tell how sluggish the phone feels with iOS 16. I can only imagine how much worse it will feel with iOS 20.
2nd data point, I'm using Galaxy s8+ from 2017. I haven't taken great care of it so the back glass has many cracks in it. However the front glass has no cracks, minor scratches but is otherwise in great shape. I don't notice the scratches when I'm using it, but they're easily visible when the phone is off and held at an angle in the light. I'm still very pleased with the performance and the battery life. I did not expect it to last more than 5 years.
No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing they can have. Smartphones are so essential now and used 24/7, don't cheap out on it. You don't cheap out on food either. Nothing to do with status. Not all about Apple either, there are nice premium Android phones as well. What are you doing, saving for a golden tombstone?
Except many people do. Friend of mine is a chef and likes to quip that people will pour the most expensive oil into their car and the cheapest into their pan. The median American takes home like 35k a year, they're not saving anything for their tombstone, they're lucky if the house is paid off by that time. Yet you see a lot of people run around with the newest top line phone. That's just conspicuous consumption.
Almost nobody except for mobile gaming enthusiasts or VR users gets meaningful premium value out of a new phone at this point. People drop serious money on new hardware every two years that they use for Whatsapp and TikTok.
I think the wide variety of payment scheme is the main reason for buying luxury or premium items from lots of consumers. The monthly payment is so low they don't feel it unless they lose their jobs.
The house? 35k isn't enough to RENT a place of your own almost anywhere in the US, never mind a mortgage, and all the additional expenses that come with owning a home, like maintenance.
Even in the middle of nowhere, it's basically impossible to find a 1br for under $1000/month. That's $12k/yr.
At $35k/yr, you have $2500/month post tax, so at $1000 you're spending almost half your post-tax income on rent (and that's not including utilities, taxes, etc).
I'm not sure where you live, but in my area you can rent a well maintained 3 bedroom home with a yard for $850-950 per month. 1 bedroom homes rent for closer to $550.
I'm in the south too actually, about 45 minutes outside Birmingham, AL
I've seen cheaper housing in Birmingham as well, but I don't know some of those areas nearly as well and couldn't vouch for how nice or safe they actually are outside of listing photos online
Cheaping out in food is not uncommon and honestly a great way to save a lot. It's also super easy to decide to do. My wife and I literally don't eat out anymore. Haven't been to sit down place in many months. The value of the experience has degraded so much and the price is so absurd, that every time we used to go out in the past 2 years we questioned why we even bother anymore. And the money we save is used for travelling or the things we choose not to cheap out on (our hobbies).
If the value has degraded so much then you're not giving up anything by sticking to groceries, right? That's a bit different from buying a lower quality phone.
For you, maybe a better analogy would be buying cheaper food at the grocery store.
(I see a lot of restaurants serving outstanding food so it does feel like a sacrifice when we don't eat there, plus we do shop carefully and buy in bulk. I also have an iPhone.)
>people value themselves and get the best thing they can have.
The problem is that what someone considers "best" is highly influential by their social environment, of which status is a part of. If the majority of your friends use Apple, and there is the whole app interactivity that you get with things like iMessage over SMS, if you value the social experience you are going to think that Apple is best.
> No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing they can have.
Not everyone is this embedded in consumerism. Most of us have our proclivities & things we are biased towards (clothing, cars, travel, house, hobbies), but most people don't splurge on everything.
You make a big assumption that it is all about status or that status is a simple equation.
From what I have seen, Android phones appeal to people who want or must spend as little as possible on their phones. It also appeals to people who want to tweak and customize their phones. There is a brand appeal among some of those people to be the anti-Apple.
Apple does appeal to some for brand identity. It also seems to appeal to people who are buying a phone that they can just take out of the box and use without spending much time in setup and configuration.
> just take out of the box and use without spending much time in setup and configuration
That's me. I buy Apple because there's already enough hobbies in my life and I don't need my daily driver devices to also be playful area to tinker with. Give me good enough defaults and the least amount of customizability possible please thanks.
Also, anecdotally, my mom who doesn't do English stopped asking me support questions about her devices almost immediately when we switched her from Android to Apple. On Android it was like nothing ever quite worked right and she couldn't at all figure out how to do things.
I bought an iPhone because Android vendors kept leaving me high and dry after a few years. I'm now on year 6 with the iPhone and it's still working great. As I understand it, I have another year or two before Apple stops supporting it with updates.
That makes the iPhone far cheaper than any comparable Android phone I could have bought back then.
Maybe today Android vendors are offering longer support horizons but I've been burned multiple times and won't trust that ecosystem again.
To me this feels more like the situation where someone with money in the bank can buy $200 shoes which will last 10 years, while someone living paycheck to paycheck has to keep buying $40 shoes that fall apart after a year.
> and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for them
So, not necessarily Androids, but whatever they happen to choose? I'm not sure what we're observing, that people just use whatever phone they prefer? Honestly, iPhones aren't a heck of a lot more expensive than a flagship Pixel phone, especially not for a multi-year tech investment. The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past. Usually people just want the CPU and GPU, if they're not older than about 4 years. The rest of the carcass just gets piled into an ever-growing closet stash of old PC components. If you have a Macbook on the other hand, you'll have a dozen people asking if it's still available every day until you sell it. Even if it's a relic, just with a working battery and hard drive.
My bias in this conversation is that I've owned an iPhone 12 since late 2020 with no signs of needing an upgrade anytime soon. I don't know anybody living in poverty but shoveling all of their money into Apple tech.
>The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past.
I think you're perceiving the same thing in both cases, but interpreting the data wrong re: PC hardware.
I just looked, the cheapest unlocked smart phone that Best Buy carries is $60. Yes, its pretty much garbage. But if you need to have a smart phone, and not much else, compare $60 to the cheapest iPhone ($430). So it goes with computers too. The floor on not Apple is quite a ways lower than the floor on Apple, even as the ceilings are pretty comparable. And what Apple is optimizing for is very different from what the average high-end PC manufacturer is optimizing for. When you do an oranges-to-oranges comparison of Macbooks and equivalent laptops, their prices end up pretty comparable.
Saying "iPhones are expensive" is very much akin to saying "the Mercedes G-Class is expensive". Its under-informed (as you say) only because a lot of people get iPhones (and Mercedes G-Classes) as status symbols, not for the innate capabilities.
Firstly, I just want to point out this is kind of a silly argument. A $300 difference in a multi-year investment for a device that drives the way people communicate, pay bills, and even entertain themselves is so negligible that it's not very much worth discussing.
But okay, that's cool and all, but you WILL need to refresh it 1.5x as often or more.. The Pixel 7a goes EoL on security patches in under 5 years. Meanwhile, Apple is still providing patches on iPhone 5 series products released 9 years ago, and latest iOS is available on iPhone models released almost 6 years ago.
Anyway, let's say none of that matters and that tech conservative people only hold their phones for 4 years anyway. An iPhone will hold its value better for that period of time, when you go to sell it on Craigslist. A 4 year old Google Pixel 3a XL can be bought for $72 on Swappa. An almost 5 year old iPhone XR is for sale for $195.
And that's not even to point out the iPhone SE as the other user did, which is cheaper than the Pixel 7a, though I think it would be a fair retort that the iPhone SE is more a competitor to the Pixel 6 generation. 6a being just a tad cheaper than the iPhone SE.
Thinking of tech as a multi-year investment makes the price differences negligible. It's really all about which garden you prefer to be in. Even if your credit sucks and you just need to pay cash for a phone, Swappa makes being in either garden so cheap that you hardly need to worry. And phones are so fast these days that exact tech specs hardly matter anymore unless you're big on mobile gaming.
>Do you also question why people buy quality shoes or mattresses?
I do. I am 99% convinced that the majority of first world people waste way too much money on shoes that aren't any better or worse than cheaper options. Shoes don't really get all that much better than they were previously, but somehow they always change and the cost always goes up.
Agreed - a lot of so-called quality shoes aren't and as for the mattress wars...
It's pretty frustraing, because even stuff that used to be dependable quality seems to get outcompeted by people buying stuff they replace (or would like to, if they could afford the monthly payments) as soon as the next model comes out. And so, the reliable, dependable company slumps (i.e. company making shoes that last for years), is bought-out by a hedge fund, quality goes to hell as they feed off its reputation.
So many people people say they want to buy quality, actually they want to buy is status (Rolex, Apple, Burberry, ...).
I haven't found any shoes that address my foot issues. Even if I did I'm sure they would cost 5x the price of regular shoes and would provide almost no improvement.
Are there some kind of objective metrics on how modern shoes are better than shoes from 10 years ago? Are they objectively more durable? Is the shape somehow better for your feet? Because I haven't felt any of it. For me it's just like other clothing: change for the sake of change.
As someone with severe over pronation (due to completely flat feet) I know most of the developments have been in materials and shapes.
It used to be there was a couple pairs of shoes I could buy, now it seems as if most manufacturers have a few models that help. My last pair cost a LOT of money (Brooks), but I can tell you I've never felt a shoe as good as this one. They get better every time I buy shoes which is every 2-3 years.
Get some diabetic shoes with custom made orthotics. Will probably cost about $200. Will be life changing. Like walking on a pillow. It's about 3x the thickness of a normal insole, amd will be custom modeled to get weight off of whatever you need releived.
Those outside of capitalist countries who move to countries like America usually make the same consumption choices (sometimes it seems worse - Gucci purses and stuff) it’s just that they don’t have the ability in the country they live in. I think it’s less about the economic system and more about access.
That being said I agree with you about advertising getting people to buy things they don’t want or don’t need (strong need) in capitalist economies but that’s a failure of regulation and this a failure by the people.
Another experiment you can do though is look at highly capitalist countries like Norway or Denmark and look at the consumption patterns and then compare that with other capitalist countries like China (effectively capitalist) or the U.S. or Brazil and see whether or not it’s a cultural phenomenon or perhaps an economic one. As I’m sure you could guess I think it’s cultural.
That's the myth.
From personal experience helping iPhone users, they seem to tolerate bad interface and hardware a lot more than other people and blame themselves when they can't get something to work.
I've had numerous iDevices over the years and not a single one failed anyhow. No iPhone, no iPad, no Power Mac, no Macbook, no mac Mini. And I got a trade in worth 40 bucks on my still working 2013 iPad when I bought my 2021 one.
I have a 2011 mac mini that is being used as a file/media/misc apps server right now. I’ve also got a 2020 m1 mba (personal) and a xps 15 (from work) and while the xps is more powerful, it does not feel as nice as the mba (no noise, feels solid). I’m not at all happy with apple’s restrictions, but they build nice tools. When i want something to tinker with, I choose something else.
From a sim card set of instructions that I was working with today:
For iPhone customers: Please install APN after inserting sim card. Open the following website with Safari-Browser: *.*.com.
That isn't just working. It looks like iPhone users have an extra configuration step when using this particular sim card.
Thanks! Very interesting. I suspect this has something to do with the network arrangements of simcard-korea. That’s not standard for iphones with ‘normal’ in-country sims. I change my sim every few months and it ‘just works’ without any extra steps.
The link at the bottom has a profile that sets the APN - it might work without it if you reboot tbh but without being in Korea and having the SIM I can’t verify that. It isn’t the app that he’s talking about.
Didn’t see that. Viewed image on phone and didn’t scroll.
I think it depends on the carrier whether APNs are required. Can be automatically set nowadays with iOS 16 according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201699
Not anymore. The hardware quality has gone downhill hard.
My powerbook from 2004 still works fine (kind of too slow, so I don't use it, but works fine).
In my powerbook from 2021 the entire right side of ports died less than a year into it.
Bought a macbook air in late 2022, one of the usbc ports died just a few months into its life. Which reminds me I need to take it to the store and see if they'll fix it or if I'm SOL again.
I'm not ragging on anyone that uses Apple products, but the "Apple products just work" thing is just as big of a meme as "Apple is for rich people" & "Android is for poor people" memes. Apple products "just work" so long as you want to do something Apple deems worth doing.
I'm amazed at the emotionality of people who dislike Apple. I guess it's a classic projection thing where those with strong emotions opposed assume that those who disagree must do so out of the polar opposite emotion.
Apple products are less expensive the more money you make. Not just as a relative income statement, but because of resale value. You can buy a new $1000 phone every single year and end up spending $300/year net of taxes and depreciation. You just have to have the capital that you can tie up.
I'm on an iPhone 7 Plus since a year. It's an old model that I bought secondhand. It was partly experiment. I was using an Android phone: Motorola G5 (also old). I love that G5, but I have the variant with only 16GB internal memory, which is simply not enough nowadays. For me the G5 is still fast enough, but every time there are app updates, I need to free space so the update can install.
My wife was already using a second hand iPhone and convinced me to try it too. I got that iPhone 7 Plus for cheap, it is in really good condition and it has 256GB internal memory. I was aware it would be stuck on iOS 15, but to my surprise, Apple still sends out security updates for iOS 15. I just checked: my phone is on 15.7.7 and I noticed 15.7.8 came out just a couple of days ago. See [1].
I know that Apple is a closed eco-system and all, but for my phone I don't care that much. My phone just has to work. I still use Google products (maps, mail, calendar, keep, chat), but those run just fine on iOS. The other apps I use, are also working just fine (no performance issues).
To me, it's amazing that a phone from 2016 is still receiving security updates. That is simply non-existent in Android world. As someone who does not have the urge to always have the latest and hottest, that is very nice to see.
I watched a dating show episode, Updating, on YouTube. At one point the fact that the guy was using an Android and not an iPhone was a major "ick" (point of revulsion) to the audience and the (otherwise stunning) female contestant.
Wtaf? Just had to shake my head. Ironically, my S21 Ultra with 16GB of memory/512 of storage was way ahead of anything Apple had made at time of release, probably cost the same as their top model at the time, and is still punching hard with no need whatsoever for me to .. update.
I am baffled why people keep making this asinine remark.
Stock iPhone is not status. Vertu is status (and is an Android platform), moreso the Vertu Signature line. Aftermarket modded iPhones that are encrusted with gold and diamonds are status. The former is the Jane Birkin bag of the smartphones, the latter is pure bling. Both send the same message: I have done financially exceptionally well (or my daddy has paid for it).
iPhone is equally unobtanium to anyone pre-launch nor does Apple make bespoke or customised editions for anyone, both of which also obliterate its purported status symbol. Ironically, it actually makes iPhone more equal and less status compared the status smartphones.
iPhone might be a status symbol in low income countries, and so are Samsung Galaxy's, the top of the range Huawei's, Xiaomi's and whatever else expensive there is out there.
Probably because when they buy something they want it to work.
I was a die hard android fan boy. Owned nearly all android flagships.
I first was driven away from the Google branded phones because it was clear their priorities where something other than providing me the best hardware and software experience.
Then I was driven away from Samsung because too much bloat and advertisements within the core OS.
None is the home integration worked right. Too fractured and error prone.
I got tied of seeing people use their iPhones to get shit done and not needing to tinker heir damn phone all the time.
The iPhone is a tool. A well thought out tool that gets the fuxk out of my way so I can do the things I want. Android. IRS a toy. It’s an advertisement delivery vehicle. On Android you are the customer not the user.
I’ve switched back and forth. Just had worse experience overall on android. Maybe I’ll try them in another few years. For a low budget I went through 3 androids and settled on a used iPhone which was waaay more stable.
It may just be that people who have lower income, and are guided by "status" may make worser choices or are can't/don't understand financial implications or maybe they are just doing their best to "peacock" and fit in with what they think is the right tool to achieve their goals?
It's nothing new, you could've said the same thing in the 90's about Sega, Nintendo and Playstation and with Shoes, Clothes, anything -
Yes 60% of Americans are guided by “status”. My 80 year old mom was just talking to me yesterday about how she feels superior to everyone else because she has Blue bubbles like the Instagram influencers she followx
You’re right. I spent an extra $14 on an iPhone 12 vs the Samsung. Now I have a blue bubble, and people treat me like I’m smart and better looking. Combined with drinking the beer I learned about on the Super Bowl ads, women think I’m cool too.
I use iPhones because I can get 5-7 years of use out of each one. Can you recommend an Android phone that has the same level of software support? Preferably something that also works properly with my MacBook, because that is what I use for work.
I have a ton of Apple products and I could not care less about the status they confer. They just genuinely have a better end to end user experience most of the time. They do, for the most part, live up to the “just works” mantra.
Are you really constantly amazed? iPhone user here. I don’t see my phone as a status symbol. I just like it much better. If you like Android better, that’s cool too.
Nobody pays attention to the phone I have. I am not some teenager sitting at the lunch table with her friends blabbing about phones. To suggest I have iPhone because of status seeking is just ridiculous. Most grown ups don’t care what other grown ups think of their phone. It isn’t 1996.
My phone is in my pocket 99% of the time, why would I care what people think about it? Anyway, a base model iPhone is only in the $600 range, that is like a week of minimum wage work in my state. Where’s the status?
No, it is just a basic functional smartphone for people who don’t like to configure these things (I’ll happily tinker all day with my Linux laptop, but smartphones are just like the worst form-factor, I want it to just work and then go away).
Yeah it's very weird, here in Europe the SE is a lot more expensive. Here in Spain it's €559 which is much more $ to € markup than any of the other models.
I don't think it's that interesting a model either because it ignores the last 5 years of innovations like bezelless phones. For €349 you can get a nice midrange Android which does have a bezelless screen, fingerprint in display, oled display and often even a 3.5mm jack.
Sure it's not as fast but that's one one thing I care less about, if I need fast I'll use my computers. The phone is just for on the road.
Not when you consider that modern phones are also our cameras, satellite navigation systems, calendars, mobile hotspots, mobile browsers, handheld gaming devices, music players, video players, and more.
Personally, I think they’re a heck of a bargain for what they do.
Consider that they're selling a pocket supercomputer. A 386 PC in the early 90's (already second tier to the first 486's) would sell for over $3000, which is $7000 today. Our contemporary expectation that consumer electronics must be rock bottom cheap is a little warped by globalism. This from someone who won't pay more than $300 for something that is easily lost or damaged.
For a person who isn’t technical (able to compile programs), an iPhone has a superset of a laptop’s functionality. Except, much more user-friendly, because all your programs come from the App Store.
> For a person who isn’t technical (able to compile programs), an iPhone has a superset of a laptop’s functionality.
That doesn't even begin to make any sense. Can you run CAD software or serious photo processing on a phone (like DxO)? Nothing I run on a mac can run on a phone.
It’s not “just” a phone. As a previous comment addressed: a high quality camera, video or audio editing workstation, hotspot, nav system, media player.. you can even get FLIR camera attachments, use it as a measuring device, and play high quality games on it.
“Just” a phone would make and receive phone calls and that’s it.
You honestly equate buying an at least arguably better electronic device and ecosystem that you may interact with for hours a day with what’s mostly a logo on an I assume is an admittedly well-made bag?
Probably to at least some degree among kids. No one else cares. Just like no one else cares about green bubbles vs. blue bubbles. But some people feel a need to convince themselves that no one would buy an Apple product for any reason but status.
Time is valuable, and the ecosystem of Android phones is filled with time-wasting BS: bloatware, OEM specific UIs, varying device quality, lack of OEM support, confusing accessory compatibility, a marketplace full of malware, etc.
For the type of people here that like to tinker with tech this might be a non-issue, but some other people just want to use the device to accomplish tasks with as little friction as possible.
The problem here is calling in "ecosystem of Android", it is mainly Andriod vs Samsung. You are either in the Samsung Ecosystem (i.e Samsung UI) or in the Andriod world, Most of the other vendors, the few there are, run close to stock Andriod these days.
Then of-course there is Pixel's Pure Android.
Not really all that confusing, if you can not figure it out then I trust your better served by iPhone.... you likely have also given up on computers completely as windows or linux is far too complicated for you.
>> confusing accessory compatibility
what?
>>a marketplace full of malware
Yes, user freedom bad, must only have applications that Mr Tim approves.
The OEM doesn't have a store in the mall that will help an elderly family member with it. The OEM stops publishing updates after the phone leaves the shelf. etc.
> Most of the other vendors, the few there are, run close to stock Andriod these days.
Which is a gigantic pain in the butt when you're trying to talk your mother through the settings menu over the phone to change one setting, and the OEM decided that was the one feature they wanted to move/rename/omit/customize.
> if you can not figure it out then I trust your better served by iPhone.... you likely have also given up on computers completely as windows or linux is far too complicated for you.
> Yes, user freedom bad, must only have applications that Mr Tim approves.
That's the thing, it shouldn't take someone like me to use a phone. Phones are mass market devices that children, elderly, disabled, and uneducated people use.
>>Phones are mass market devices that children, elderly, disabled, and uneducated people use.
I really really despise this narrative in modern society where by everyone must lower their standards, expectations, or limit themselves so we can cater to the lowest common denominator of society.
This is like saying we need to limit the speed on highways to 20 because some people can not figure out how to drive at 70...
Lower our standards? I look at it in the opposite way. Apple’s accessibility features are the amazing and other manufacturers should raise their standards.
So buy your PinePhone or whatever and let the vast majority of users have something that’s simple and reasonably standardized. I can certainly use a general purpose computer but I don’t want my phone to be complicated.
It likely varies by area and average income, here it's almost an inverse correlation - the less-well off kids at school tend to have parents on iPhones and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for them.