Who's going to make Tim Cook happy?

[Time Waster]

Whatever the security "experts" say I've never had a single security issue with any Samsung, LG, honor or work iPhone. It simply isn't an issue for me.

What is an issue is that back when I got my work iPhone handmedown 5c a year after it was new I had nothing but issues. I was used to an LG g2 which by that time was 3 or 4 years old I think. It was before I changed the battery but it still lasted several days. The biggest issue was highly unexpected. It wasn't user friendly!

Now I was very familiar with android and a few skins from different phone brands. Apple's iOS was new but simply wasn't intuitive. It couldn't actually do a few things I'd been doing on android 1 or 2 versions back! Now at the time my work colleagues were iPhone fans and had the latest iPhone 6 at the time. I updated my os when I could so my phone was using the same build as those iPhone 6s. Somehow it didn't have any means to select all emails to delete or archive. To delete my emails I had to select each email by carefully touching the screen in the right place, not easy with the tiny screen and low sensitivity my phone seemed to have. Every time I deleted say 50 emails they got filled with old ones. I couldn't stop it downloading old emails to keep 50 on the phone. My android I could deal with an email then remove it from the phone so only new emails were on the phone to be dealt with in my work account.

This issue was easy to solve apparently as one after one iPhone and apple fan tried but couldn't solve. They all said their phone had a select all toggle at the top. They all checked out my it's build and it was the same as theirs. Something was different with my iPhone. I ended up setting up my work email email account on my personal phone as it was user friendly.

Now I know that I am an android user and possibly as biased as apple fans are for their favoured iOS, but serious apple fans and users could not get over my iPhone issues. Even apple help and community forum failed. Still no idea why!

But that wasn't the only issue and surprisingly poor user experience I had. Years later I had a mid range Samsung, still got it. A director of my company who's very IT and technology literate took a look at it and was impressed. He actually said that he felt android had overtaken apple iOS in performance and use. He still uses iPhone as he is institutionalised. Part of the annual upgrade treadmill! He does say that if he'd not got into apple years back he'd be on android.

This from a guy with apple laptop who ended up ditching it for a Windows laptop at half the price because even our it consultant couldn't get it to play nice with our it setup. They didn't want to spend thousands on changing the IT infra and setup to allow it.

 

[bonzobanana]

I wouldn't dispute any of that, it is just that "I wouldn't buy an Apple product because ..." when all other phones are exactly the same from that POV makes no sense. Why pick on Apple products?

If you had said you wouldn't "buy a new phone because ..." then fair enough, but that isn't what you said or suggested initially.

I guess my point is about the marginal gains of premium products which are often a status symbol purchase. Sometimes they are not only expensive to buy but have short usable lifespans and poor reliability meaning more spent on repairs. This all adds to our trading deficit.

Trying to get more value from your imported products would seem a better option. Japanese cars are a lot more reliable than German cars and repairs are less expensive however with many of them there is less bragging rights. Some Toyotas and Nissans are made in the UK too.

I'm having to suffer the damage caused by so many people who are happy to export huge amounts of their income and damage the economy. So I'm more likely to be a victim of crime or not have access to important NHS services when I need them through no fault of my own. I probably have about £100k of public sector debt plus pension shortfalls on my head through no fault of my own. I'm having to subsidise their choices.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I've just realised... My work iPhone will be 10 years old soon. I don't use it for much apart from one MFA app and to re broadcast a WiFi network for my laptop occasionally. Plus very rare calls. It's still going fine.

Battery life is not great and if I do let it go flat I have to plug it in and leave it for 20-30 min to come back to life (So I keep it permanently plugged to my laptop to stop that happening)

 

[Legs]

I've just got my iPhone 7 repaired because the battery had swollen (a sign of overcharging, apparently, although I thought that battery optimisation prevented this), to the extent that it had cracked the screen and was lifting it clear of the phone body. I bought it second-hand in Feb 2020 so it's done me reasonably well, and it's worth keeping hold of so that Legs Jr can inherit it when he 'comes of age'.

 

[Dadam]

The wife and I both have iPhone 11s purchased new from Apple but at a big discount compared to when they were the latest model. My old 8 Plus is my daughter's and even my previous 6S Plus is going strong in use by my son. These were both my last two corporate issued handsets from a previous employer who have a "buyback" scheme. My old personal 6S is still going strong in daily use by my mother. All the batteries are still fine.

The 6S will no longer get the latest version of iOS but will still get security updates for a year or two. The latter won't be a problem for my Mum as she doesn't really use apps, and my son just uses it as a small games tablet. The pinch point will be when it no longer runs Minecraft!

So the obsolescence criticism that Apple gets singled out for isn't valid, in fact Apple generally support the older versions with at least critical security updates for a couple of years longer than Google support Android versions.