Lemmy is a clean slate. Let’s leave the Android/iOS butthurt shit on Reddit for as long as we can.
Please, I’m iOS user but I enjoy reading advances of android because both systems push each other to be better. We don’t need toxic BS here too.
Exactly. I use both along with macOS, Windows, Linux. All have their pros and cons and all work well. Most of the rant comments are just BS.
I’ve had bot android and iOS over the years. Love them both for their own reasons. Currently rocking a pixel 7.
Interesting, so windows vs mac os didn’t cause a flame war but Android vs IOS does.
Possibly because the cost for entry to macOS is higher than with iOS. Most people are able to run a Windows computer at very little cost, and will never have any interaction with a Mac. Meanwhile, iPhones and Android phones are (broadly) on a par in terms of cost.
I will say though, speaking as someone who’s used Macs since 2007, as much as I’m no fan of how Windows works, I won’t give anyone shit for doing so. But I used to get quite a bit of vitriol for my choice of computer.
Meanwhile, iPhones and Android phones are (broadly) on a par in terms of cost. This is only true if talking about mid-high end phones (and probably only high-end), you can get really cheap Android phones, incredibly cheaper than Iphones.
Many people just have phones now.
It’s always interesting to see people turn something as universal as a phone into a competition.
If you’re willing to spend the money, you can make yourself look silly by spending thousands on either one.
Phones have become such a staple of modern existence, it’s about the same as wearing shoes.
Shit. I just realized they turn shoes into that, too
Sneakerheads are a whole different breed
Because nobody has windows user as a core part of their identity.
I was gonna comment that this exact post was made a few days ago with the only difference being Mac vs Windows instead. Seems you’re already aware, and you’re just farming. Nice.
the windows vs mac shit is also toxic nonsense and you know it.
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my partner uses an iPhone, and i’ll never understand how. there’s so many hoops you have to jump through to find or do anything on there… the UI is a complete shitshow. it’s the least intuitive interface i have ever had the misfortune to use. Macs are somehow even worse. if you love someone, find them an Android replacement and set it on baby/elderly mode with all the buttons huge and in one spot. a fucking Jitterbug would be an upgrade.
Not sure if it’s changed since I had an iPhone, but the camera settings are located in the system settings app.
You have to exit the camera app, open system settings, find camera, just to change basic things.
On Android you just… change the settings in the damn camera app…
That is intentional. All non-app-specific settings are stored at the OS level. The camera settings impact every piece of software that uses the camera, not just the “Camera” app. That’s how all settings in iOS works and it’s only odd if you’re not familiar with it. Once you are familiar with Android AND iOS you see each systems way of doing things.
It’s always interesting to see this perspective as I basically feel the exact opposite. I use an iPhone, and have an Android phone as a test device for work. Generally, my iPhone and Mac are so much easier to use together than an Android phone and Windows or Linux PC.
Universal clipboard and AirDrop are built into the OS and way better than KDE Connect. Shortcuts is also much easier and more powerful than Tasker. Plus excellent apps like Prologue, NetNewsWire, Ivory, or Elastic Drums have no parallels on Android.
For whatever reason, iOS users are more willing to pay for software and that makes the software available on iOS significantly better.
I use Android and I hate drastic change, my brother switched to the apple ecosystem and is constantly showing me cool things. I’ll give Apple one thing, they know how to make their devices just work together with basically no effort. It’s something I wish Android did even half as well.
I think that’s why it succeeds. I love Android’s abilities but I just want stuff to be reliable and intuitive above all else. Apple would fail if it didn’t have that as its main feature.
I had to use a Macbook Pro for some years (for work) and I hated it. The Apple UI is horrible and the whole system was too sluggish. Routine updates could break your system (IT had to reimage my system once).
The main advantage ios has over Android is its lack of support for virtualization (like java). This makes their apps much less resource hungry, faster, and the phone does not slow down as much over time. Given the fact that idiotic apps like Instagram and Facebook need supercomputers to run on Android the difference for the end user is a huge gulf performancewise. It must be a nightmare for developers though.
For people who know what they are doing it is very easy to maintain the software health on android and keep it running fast over time. If you don’t though usage of apps like the ones mentioned above will make it run like a commodore in months.
That virtualization thing hasn’t really been true for quite a while. Android compiles the Java-ish code ahead of time (the .oat file is a playful acronym for “ahead of time”) to native code. There’s still overhead with exceptions and other java-isms, but that still very much exists in objective-c.
I’d bed that iPhones only seem faster because it’s normal to have more powerful and expensive new iPhones. Android has auto-suspended apps in the background for longer than iphone, and it doesn’t require any maintenance to keep running smoothly (it doesn’t even require “closing” apps from the app drawer).
Can you install this IPA?
Apple: Noooo! You have to install apps from my App Store!
Unless of course, you pay $100 and call yourself a developer
I love it. I made an Android app in 2011 and I still sometimes load up the .apk for nostalgia.
It was the first app I ever made and although some functions no longer work (due to 3rd party SDKs and APIs that no longer exist), it’s mostly still pretty flawless.
According to my Google Play dashboard, there are even some people that still use it!
What’s the app? I kind of wanna take a look
Ha, I was not expecting anyone to be that interested in it! I’ve checked my Google Play console and it turns out I unpublished it a while ago to stop new downloads.
The app was called “Gaffer for Giffgaff”. For those of you who aren’t from the United Kingdom, “Giffgaff” is a mobile phone network over here.
Back when I made this app, the network had a real problem with onboarding. The APN settings weren’t included on new Android handsets by default as of yet (which they are today) and most new users would have to type them in manually. There were apps that input these settings before I started developing mine, but these were not very user friendly even by 2011 standards! In later revisions of the app, I even paid £100 to have a professional voice actor record some lines to guide users through the setup process which I uploaded here: https://m.soundcloud.com/bitbrit/gaffer-for-giffgaff-apn-setup (I don’t know why I thought uploading this to SoundCloud at the time was something to do. Guess I was just proud of it?)
As well as onboarding, the network had issues with reliability. My app included push notifications so that the user could connect to WiFi and quickly figure out if the Giffgaff network was down or if their phone was not working properly. At first I started sending these notifications myself but after my app gained some attention, the Giffgaff forum moderators began sending the notifications themselves (although I seem to remember that I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about this at the time).
These days, features like push notifications aren’t considered to be that fancy. When I was making this app, though, it was a pretty big deal. I was sending notifications at scale and doing it on basically 0 budget, as an individual.
Anyway, enough background information. I’ve gone through the app and taken some screenshots. I’ve also included the .APK file however I would recommend that you don’t install this (I am, after all, just some guy on the internet and not a trustworthy source) - but it’s there in case you feel adventurous.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14m-d-uADZZvFeEAkMNtYwvyfxoIeMDpq
Very cool! As the guy who got Xiaomi’s working in the USA due to outdated abd locked APN settings, I know that pain. I am glad that my bug fix was implemented.
And I compeletely understand uploading to soundcloud it was something you were proud of😁
And not to worry, I have a burner phone for running random stuff on
Android and iOS have different philosophies regarding updates.
Android phones often only receive OS updates for a short time and are then used for many years more.
iOS devices usually receive OS updates for a much longer time.
This means, Android app devs have to make their apps more compatible, because otherwise they will exclude most users.
iOS devs on the other hand often only support the newest version of iOS, so if your device doesn’t get new OS updates any more, you can toss it.
iOS devs on the other hand often only support the newest version of iOS, so if your device doesn’t get new OS updates any more, you can toss it.
And the newest versions of iOS only run smoothly on the newest iPhone hardware, so if you want your phone to keep running quickly and smoothly you have to keep updating to the newest hardware. Planned obsolescence in action.
Except the devs who made games for kids. Those guys still support iOS 10 because kids often receive hand-me-downs from their parents.
Lots of games in Google Play Store are no longer possible to purchase because they are “incompatible with newer versions of Android”.
Yeah, that’s the Play Store though, not Android itself.
I made some Android apps back in the day, so I know what’s happening behind the scenes. Mostly it’s that Google updates requirements for the apps. Every once in a while, the requirements go up (e.g. “must be targeted for at least Android Version/API Level X”, or “Must follow design guideline Y”). The main point for this is that they don’t want abandoned apps cluttering the Play Store.
Old apps tend to not support newer features, e.g. the user being able to allow/deny single permissions. On older Android versions you could either allow all permissions or not use the app, while nowadays you can just pick and choose which permissions to allow.
If you install an older app, it won’t support this pick and chose system. Stuff like that.
But all that is just Google/Play Store. If you download the APK from somewhere else (e.g. F-Droid) you can totally run apps from 2010 on a modern phone.
That’s probably because the Play Store has policies on what apps need to do to keep being downloadable - if you acquire an APK, there’s a really good chance that it might still be installable.
Difference is you can find all the apks online. With iOS you cant
Not yet, but the EU is gonna force Apple to allow sideloading apps.
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Android removed 32 bit support in the newest version. Maybe see what the compatibility is after that releases
For most apps, this doesn’t matter at all. The vast majority of Android apps are fully Java/Kotlin, which is architecture-agnostic.
It’s only when you need to use C libraries where architecture matters, and most things using C libraries are games, which already target 64-bit.
This man APKs.
Hopefully they it’s like Windows with 64bit and 32bit support
I mean Android de facto is the Windows of mobile phones
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Your only compatibility wall is the play store. If you’ve got the apk you’re installing 9/10 times. Apk repos are great.
This is funny considering Android 14 may be sunsetting support for 32-bit apps in favor of exclusive 64-bit apps, which will likely break a lot of backward compatability. Whoopsie doodles.
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Not true, the Pixel 7 has already removed 32-bit support. It’s a 64-bit exclusive OS and won’t let you sideload 32-bit apps.
That’s not exclusive to the OS. The Pixel 6 running Android 13 can install 32 bit apps, but the Pixel 7 running Android 13 cannot.
So there’s a possibility that Android 14 will still allow 32 bit apps on all other devices other than the Pixel 7. Pixel 7 and onwards might be where Google forces out 32 bit apps, which personally isn’t a huge deal, because every app I have is 64 bit.
Although Android is made by Google, it is after all cousin-brother of Linux with the same advantages
If it wasn’t for locked devices and proprietary drivers, it would be a nice experience, very close to linux.
If you have root access it isn’t a problem, then you can use alternatives, like GrapheneOS, Ubuntu Touch, CalyxOS or similar. The only problem is if you need an official app, since they are usually only available for Android or iOS. Then the only are Replicant or LinageOS, these are “degoogled” Android forks
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reminds me of that time i installed a really old version of opera on my android tablet
What ever happened to initiatives such as project Treble? Do you guys think updates have gotten better on Android?
I remember when I used to be excited about Android OS updates and kept watching videos about new features (that I was not gonna get anytime soon because I was stuck in an old version of Android)… It’s been years since I’ve been excited about an Android update.
Little side note rant:
My biggest annoyance with Android is the share menu. I hate how it’s different for different apps (Firefox is vastly different from other apps for instance). I can notice at least 3 different sharing menus with the apps I frequently use. Makes it hard to build muscle memory… And I cannot pin the apps I actually use frequently for sharing stuff. Also the direct share thing never worked for me. I think it’s only for sharing via SMS or Email neither of which I use for sharing content, so it ended up being just a waste of space for me.Hope they fix the share menu one day… But then I’d have to wait to change my phone to get the updates.
Android updates have become both less exciting and less meaningful because so many of the core apps are updated through the Play Store, and features just come out when they are ready. If Google held off updating their apps for a year everytime, each update would feel like a much bigger deal
But holding them makes zero sense, like, why wait for an improvement if you can ship it already?
Oh, Project Treble is in full swing, which is one of the main reasons you now frequently see Android phones with 3+ years of software support, often even with multiple Android OS version updates.
Project Mainline is the other thing that caused OS updates to be rather lame. Since increasingly many former Android components are now just apps updated over the Play Store, there are less features in each Android update. For example, back in the day, even the Android browser was part of the OS and would only be updated when the OS was updated.
Now Google is even throwing apps like the dialer and the messages SMS app out of AOSP.
With so little of what used to be Android remaining inside Android and these outsourced components following a different release schedule, Android OS updates are mostly limited to UI refreshes or under-the-hood improvements.
But while this makes OS updates less exciting, it also means that you get improvements faster (because components don’t have to wait for the next OS update) and longer (because you get component updates when your device manufacturer dropped support for your phone).
Regarding the share menu:
There is actually only one OS share menu, but different apps sometimes implement their own share menus, which is dumb, but not really Android’s fault. But yeah, the product managers at Firefox for Android are peculiar, to say the least.
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And than there is netflix, which refuses to run on android phones with an unlocked bootloader, not even using a custom ROM, just an unlocked bootloader
Works on my phone.
You just need Universal SafetyNet Fix and all is fine.
Apps that haven’t been updated in 10 years are often incompatible on just about any platform.
depends on the app
you have something to access some cloud-api-stuff? yeah, probably all calls fail
some game that uses hardware-specific things? might break too
your average clock app or document viewer? that got a decent chance it’ll still run.
It’s a question of how fast your OS changes and how mature APIs have gotten. Android is a lot more stable now, than it was 12 years ago.
And if you look at truly mature OSes, like Linux or Windows, you probably can still run most apps that are multiple decades old. (For Win that means pretty much anything that was written for Win32(s) and newer - so even stuff that was around on Win 3.11)
That’s when it’s between the line of “You have to buy the hardware” and “Emulate it”. Something too old for modern devices, and too new for emulators to have been made.
I still want to fucking play the original Infinity Blade. I WAS SO JEALOUS of my brother because he had his fancy Iphone 4 and could play. But by the time I got a phone it was already old news and taken off the app store.
I can still play 15+ old games on my Linux laptop with wine. It just works.
I was more referring to running things natively. But yeah, if I throw an emulator on something, I can run ancient stuff on a newer OS.
wine is not an emulator. It’s even in the name :)
