Meanwhile the original iPhone SE from 2016 can boot the latest iOS. And you can get a battery replacement from Apple right at the store, same day for... 49$! It just works.
In just 4 months the Pixel 3A is officially getting EoL'd. This phone was released in 2019 (fall), same time as the iPhone 11. It just shows the wide gap between iOS and Android.
> Apparently Qualcomm asks for a ridiculous amount of money to support any chip beyond a measly 2-3 years. Apple gets away with it by building their own chips
I can believe it. Qualcomm makes money per chip sold, Apple makes money by building an ecosystem. Linux support is a cost center for Qualcomm past the initial launch kernel, and we can only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.
And it doesn’t apply to anywhere outside the US (Writing this comment on my iPhone SE, which is still on the original battery because it’s much costlier to swap the battery in India).
To me that’s an insane win for everyone, including Apple. Because it completely changes the value proposition of iPhones.
Hand me down iPhones for teenagers became a no brainer since all it costs is 49$ to get a 3-4 years old phone back to brand new. And they get the blue bubbles in iMessage (which, if you ask parents, is THE social differentiator in schools these days). Having a well architected stack and great engineering pays off in surprising ways!
> And they get the blue bubbles in iMessage (which, if you ask parents, is THE social differentiator in schools these days).
I would also add that "if you ask students, it is THE social differentiator" as well.
BUT, how the f_ck is it a good thing to encourage teenagers to get locked in to a company's products so they can stay socially relevant? iMessage's manipulative strategy (because teenagers value social belonging) by Apple is morally corrupt. I'm not saying it's effective (because their strategy absolutely is); I'm saying it's wrong. We shouldn't be encouraging children to get locked into the richest company in the world's walled garden for the rest of their life—what they use as teenagers is what they're going to, chances are, keep using for the rest of their lives.
Teenagers literally do not use Android devices. The iOS market share in American high schools is easily over 90%. If you go to a high school classroom, you would be surprised to find more than one or two Android users in one classroom.
Do you want your future to be one where Apple's locked down operating system has a market share of over 90%? Where Android is irrelevant and neglected, and you do not own your device—because unlike on iOS, some Android phones actually do let you unlock your bootloader and boot different operating systems?
Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage. It lets one company cement their iron grip on the upcoming generations and will result in a net loss of computer freedom.
> iMessage's manipulative strategy (because teenagers value social belonging) by Apple is morally corrupt
Apple decided to build better messaging on their platform. They saw that carriers simply didn’t care or understood messaging and decided to innovate and take care of the experience. Texting on iPhone just works. We should celebrate that. Google could have created a competing product as feature rich but instead decided to spawn and kill 10 different chat apps.
> Where Android is irrelevant and neglected
Honestly, the android handset makers are already neglecting their own OS, looking at the barely three years of support they offer.
> Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage
I already do. Honestly, I support the platform that just works. To me a phone is simply a tool to get things done.
Downloading Telegram, Signal, Discord, WhatsApp, or the number of third-party messaging applications that is widely used by a number of people, within and outside the blue bubble of the US "just works" as well. And unlike iMessage, these platforms let you chat with other people. What's so wrong with that? Is it too much friction to click to install a (superior with objectively tons more features than iMessage that work on all its platforms) third-party messaging client? Telegram even has games, which are quite popular amongst the teenagers, just like iMessage.
Ofcourse it just works. Apple makes software and hardware for Apple.
> we can only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.
Android has to work everywhere from dodgy tablets running Kitkat to flagships phones that cost an arm and a leg.
Oh woe. What a hard life Apple engineers have. Oh, how brilliant they are. The world would crumble without them. Woe.
In just 4 months the Pixel 3A is officially getting EoL'd. This phone was released in 2019 (fall), same time as the iPhone 11. It just shows the wide gap between iOS and Android.
> Apparently Qualcomm asks for a ridiculous amount of money to support any chip beyond a measly 2-3 years. Apple gets away with it by building their own chips
I can believe it. Qualcomm makes money per chip sold, Apple makes money by building an ecosystem. Linux support is a cost center for Qualcomm past the initial launch kernel, and we can only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.