This need to be heard loud and clear. The main reason to use iProducts is the non-ad experience. App Store is already a horrible experience with their ads. If this expands, I don't see why one shouldn't move to Google.
Eh, it's overblown. I use Android, and I don't see ads.
I tried moving to iOS for the bleeding-edge app permissions and privacy protections. But because they forbid any browser besides Safari/WebKit, the iOS version of Firefox cannot run ordinary extensions.
I tried, but I could not find a content blocker that was nearly as effective as uBlock+noScript. So I'm back on Android, where I can browse the web in peace.
I use an nvidia shield TV for many many years. It was perfect, after having tried raspberry pis and cuboxes and all manner of shit low perf SBCs as a HTPC.
Mid 2021, Google forcefully replaced the launcher/home screen for all android TV devices, such that the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen is taken up by an ad. You can't disable it, you can't remove it, there is _nothing_ you can do about it. Every time you use this home theatre device, the first thing you're presented with is an ad. I paid for that device and the software on it. I paid for youtube premium to avoid ads. I paid for google drive space to store my data. It's not like I was getting a free lunch.
I've got an Apple TV now, and an iPhone as well - replaced my OnePlus.
I use chrome for work unfortunately, yesterday I was _delighted_ to see that Google had very helpfully placed an add for their new wireless earphones on my new tab page. Very cool.
Check out Orion[1]. They claim to run web extensions on iOS. Apparently they ported many extension APIs to work with WebKit, which sounds pretty impressive.
I can’t vouch for their iOS browser (yet) but I’ve been using their Mac browser and it’s been pleasant.
> We’re working on it! We’ve begun with some of our components and intend to open more in the future.
Forking WebKit, porting hundreds of APIs and writing a browser app from scratch has been challenging for our small team. Properly maintaining an open-source project takes time and resources we’re short on at the moment, so if you want to contribute at this time, please consider becoming a beta tester.
A really bad implementation of the WebExtension API (many missing features compared to other browsers and next to no relevant documentation) that also requires wrapping each extension with an iOS app and distributing it on the App Store.
It's nice but has one major flaw of all webkit browsers. If you speed up a video, the audio will crap out and become tinny. Especially hard to hear speech. Only Firefox, Chrome get it right. It's a shame Safari / Orion still have such a fundamental flaw.
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with how Google tends to follow Apple's better ideas, but Apple has usually been the leader in privacy innovations.
It's frustrating. They make fantastic hardware, but their software leaves a lot to be desired, and they are extremely insistent on maintaining control over the devices that they sell. The M1s look like a small step in the right direction, but they have a lot of lost trust to rebuild.
> Yeah, I'm pretty happy with how Google tends to follow Apple's better ideas
they just innovate in different areas. and they borrow from each other all the time. Android introduced multi-tasking, notifications, PiP, widgets, etc. iOS introduced the app screen, app store, gesture navigation, fingerprint unlock, etc. I think Android tends to cater towards power user features (like PiP and multi-tasking) whereas iOS tends to focus on UX (like gesture navigation).
I'm looking forward to trying it out, but realistically it's gonna be running on low single digit percentage of all Android phones for at least 2 years. iOS 16 will be on 90+% of iOS devices by October...
I'm probably going have to buy a newer Android phone to be able to install Android13, I doubt the Lineage crowd are going to bother building a version to run on even my newest Android phone - at least not anytime soon.
I am not sure I understand who you are blaming for this. Google will update its Pixel devices just like Apple updates its iPhones.
If Samsung and other phone makers don't push Android 13 on their current phones, then that's not Google's problem.
> I'm looking forward to trying it out, but realistically it's gonna be running on low single digit percentage of all Android phones for at least 2 years.
Good point about the platform but you have a personal choice to get the Pixel or other phone that runs the latest Android its benefits. No different than getting an iPhone.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. It's more like Windows (a thousand vendors, each with their own config) vs Mac (one vendor, a small handful of configs).
Except it's even worse than that in the Android world because different vendors produce not just their own drivers, but their own UIs and apps that override the defaults. There's not just one Android but one for every major vendor, and thing like calendars, photos, messages, voice assistants, files, accounts, etc. can't easily be shared between them. I have a Pixel and my partner a Samsung, and we can never figure out how to share things with each other because every vendor's Android is so different.
That is a direct result of Google releasing Android under a certain model of openness, trying to catch up with iOS when it was first released and needing to give phone vendors a reason to adopt it. It got really bad for a while and they tried to rein it in with Play phones and the Google One phones and the Pixel line, but the market is still incredibly fragmented, especially between the Samsung, HTC, Google, and other major vendor variants.
Meanwhile on my iPad and Mac, everything is just seamless. After a decade of Pixels, I'm gonna switch to an iPhone soon, just because iMessage is still so much better and the carriers don't really seem to care about RCS. Android has like two dozen chat and messaging programs, all of which suck in various ways, while iOS has had one superior one all these years. Centralized control can make your platform a lot cleaner.
The fragmentation does nothing to impair your own ability to use app permissions in Android 13. You only need Android 13 on your phone. No network effect.
As for communication apps, there is exactly one great app for both Android and iPhone. It's the same app: Signal.
For those of us old enough to remember television, cable TV also started out as a premium experience that you pay for, that did not have ads.
Fast foward to the present, and cable TV is nothing but ads, you are the product, and you get to pay $XYZ/month for the privilege of being advertised to.
It's just a matter of time until Apple will be the cable TV of tech.
Just because you pay, or even pay a premium doesn't mean you aren't the product. When quarterly growth expected by shareholders cannot be met by getting new users, it will be met by squeezing existing ones.
Why does this false meme keep coming up? Basic cable was never a premium experience. Cable was first introduced to bring network TV - with ads - to areas that couldn’t get over the air reception,
The only stations that were add free were the same premium channels that you have today like HBO.
Some of the earliest cable “superstations” were just rebroadcast of local channels with ads like TBS and WGzn.
In India, regulations stated that ads on cable TV pay-to-view were supposed to be limited / less than Free-to-Air channels. But it wasn't much different ...
The above was absolutely true in my market (Australia). The GP didn't appear to specify a country, so I'm unsure why you're trying to invalidate their experience.
I think the same will first happen to Netflix, but yeah if ios drops the premium experience then Apple will find that they will have to compete with all the other Android manufacturers.
It is already a pain point for apps, because they tend to assume that it is fine to make the same shitty app for both platforms. Apple really should be way more strict with the quality of apps they approve.
Because if Apple does ads and Google does ads then it would be categorically stupid to still pay the "halo tax" to Apple with incredibly inferior software and services. How about that? Or maybe for the blue bubble?
Because Google didn’t encrypt mobile phones until Android 6, and updates are up to the manufacturer, so Android’s security culture is globally appalling? in addition to permissions being intentionally mingled, for the benefit of advertisers. At least Apple pretends that the consumer is the client.
I’m an iOS user aside from a few attempts to switch. But I’ve never heard this accusation before that permissions are grouped in a way that benefit advertisers. Could you elaborate?
They might be talking about Bluetooth requiring location permissions, which seems reasonable to me. Their reasoning is that if you can scan for Bluetooth devices you can fingerprint and potentially get a location anyway.
