No Stupid Questions

I like the user experience. I like the quality of the third party apps available. I like Apple's stated commitment to privacy. I don't trust Google.

I personally do not trust Google at all. Their entire business model is ads and tracking.

Honestly, at this point, the only reason to go with either ecosystem is that Android, for now, allows you to escape Google, to some degree depending on how much work you're willing to put in. IOS/apple doesn't allow that

But, Google is trying hard to get to the same place.

But, ignoring that, apple got there first. That's what it amounts to. The first real smart phone was by Apple, and that gave them a leg up

Why do most [insert country here] people use [insert brand from their country here]???

android user now but basically... it might be that most of us Americans try to take the path of least resistance or whatever doesn't give us headaches. I mean like, almost everything we do (except taxes) are pretty simplified. And even for taxes, we can LITERALLY pay for services to simplify or do it for us ( like wtf, this is kinda stupid). Apple does a good job of making it an easy experience.

1. easy to use - like an automatic car vs manual car.

2. popular apps just work - I don't think its a problem now but I remember when some social media apps were just broken on android vs iphone.

3. a lot of the software looks pretty clean and fancy. Gives it a polished experience.

4. HARD TO LEAVE - Apple products work better with other apple products. Once you leave, you basically lose out on all the purchases you've made over the years.

5. Apple store support - life saver for most people

6. Security updates more consistent.

Hell, trying to adjust from typing with iphone keyboard to android keyboard took longer than expected.

Also our government issues out iphones for fed employees.

I would never use an iPhone if my phone were my primary computing device. But I just make occasional calls and texts, and use a handful of apps (for instance, Nextcloud and Home Assistant connected directly to my home server, bypassing most of Apple’s ecosystem).

For a secondary device, I just want something simple and sturdy that I have to think about as little as possible—and for that specific use case the limitations are a plus.

unless you're going to crack your android and install a custom rom (which, with limited exceptions, is extremely risky to do,) your choice is to either use an apple product, or a google-based OS.

Apple has a slick design, and while android (and many of he devices it runs on) aren't awful, it's hard to change. and virtually every mainstream mobile device manufacturer is using some some form of android os with a custom UI, including Huawei (which no officially a fork, because of sanctions.)

everything that's not android or apple is pretty much going to have to be installed custom. (there's a few linux-based things that aren't android, mobian, for example is a mobile-version of debian.)

I'll leave it to the other to rant about why apple might be better than android for privacy and useability, given the caveat of not hacking a custom rom.

Usamericans usually like to look for "the best", whatever that means, and never accept "second". I assume that they need that to feed their pride.

Apple has managed to make them believe that iPhone products were the best smartphones, and all of Apple's marketing is focused on maintaining that belief.

My reasons:

1. Because it just works.
2. I can uninstall the trash apps that apple includes and use my own preferences.
3. Don’t have to deal with bloatware from two vendors (Google and Samsung for example)
4. Vendor lock-in. I started on iOS (iPod touch) and so I have a certain amount of app purchases that are iOS-only. This is the only one that galls me.
5. longevity / platform support. I’ve had this thing for close to five years, and the battery is only starting to fail in the last few months.
6. decent display. Samsung galaxy’s PCM brightness control gives me horrible eye strain.

Maybe it’s just Samsung that’s trash, I dunno. I tried hard to like android and in principle I should prefer Google’s more open ecosystem. But it just seems to enable every manufacturer of android phones to try to outcompete each other in how awful they can make the experience of owning their products, all in the name of trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

I think you vastly overestimate the "freedom" people need with their phone, you are doing the same thing Linux evangelists do, why would anyone use Windows when with just a phew workarounds everything works on Linux too, completely forgetting that average joe doesn't give a fuck about any of that, they want something that just works and Apple is still the best at that.

Personally I am a tinkerer and I still switched to an iPhone, because I need a phone that just works, with android there was always something randomly breaking, and most phones I had to set up to restart every evening otherwise it would just have random glitches in a few days.

I have owned my iphone for close to 2 years now and I can count on one hand how many times I had to restart it, hell I remember having and issue restarting it because I forgot how to do it.