That’s sort of where I’m at right now to be honest. Google has removed or plan to remove basically everything that gave Android an edge over iOS. Meanwhile Apple, for all their flaws, has actually put out some pretty compelling offerings with the iPhone 17 line both hardware- and software-wise, and has made meaningful improvements in the realm of repairability and side-loading, albeit under regulatory pressure. At this point, it’s looking like going to be harder than I’d like to choose between the two when I go to replace my phone in 3-5 years - provided both companies stay on their current trajectories.
Google’s business model involves advertising to you, tracking your activity, mining your data, and selling that information to other entities while also using it to advertise to you more. It’s their main profit-driver. You are the product.
Apple’s business model is to sell you the hardware, give you the software and make it (mostly) depend on the services to keep you locked in. You (the user) are not the product, their devices and services are.
Of the two, which is the lesser evil?
Normies are not going to fully convert to Linux phones and open-source software any time soon. In the meantime as far as privacy is concerned, Apple can do much worse and Google can do much better.
Apple’s transitioning to a services based company, which includes ad tech. They’re better than Google only for now. The enshittification of their OS’s has been ongoing, and will only get worse. macOS has had so many super user features removed, and so many iOS walled-garden regressions added.
I’m not going to argue this point, but am more interested in discussing issues they currently have than issues we think they’ll have eventually. If we’re gonna vilify a company let’s make sure we’re doing it based on stuff that’s actually happened so we know they deserve it.
To be fair, a lot of those features have been getting added back, a lot of walled-garden regressions removed as well. I guess this part is more subjective and based on your workflow. The feature churn itself is the only true constant.
That’s sort of where I’m at right now to be honest. Google has removed or plan to remove basically everything that gave Android an edge over iOS. Meanwhile Apple, for all their flaws, has actually put out some pretty compelling offerings with the iPhone 17 line both hardware- and software-wise, and has made meaningful improvements in the realm of repairability and side-loading, albeit under regulatory pressure. At this point, it’s looking like going to be harder than I’d like to choose between the two when I go to replace my phone in 3-5 years - provided both companies stay on their current trajectories.
Here’s how I think about it:
Google’s business model involves advertising to you, tracking your activity, mining your data, and selling that information to other entities while also using it to advertise to you more. It’s their main profit-driver. You are the product.
Apple’s business model is to sell you the hardware, give you the software and make it (mostly) depend on the services to keep you locked in. You (the user) are not the product, their devices and services are.
Of the two, which is the lesser evil?
Normies are not going to fully convert to Linux phones and open-source software any time soon. In the meantime as far as privacy is concerned, Apple can do much worse and Google can do much better.
Apple’s transitioning to a services based company, which includes ad tech. They’re better than Google only for now. The enshittification of their OS’s has been ongoing, and will only get worse. macOS has had so many super user features removed, and so many iOS walled-garden regressions added.
I’m not going to argue this point, but am more interested in discussing issues they currently have than issues we think they’ll have eventually. If we’re gonna vilify a company let’s make sure we’re doing it based on stuff that’s actually happened so we know they deserve it.
To be fair, a lot of those features have been getting added back, a lot of walled-garden regressions removed as well. I guess this part is more subjective and based on your workflow. The feature churn itself is the only true constant.