Genuine question.
I know they were the scrappy startup doing different cool things. But, what are the most major innovative things that they introduced, improved or just implemented that either revolutionized, improved or spurred change?
I am aware of the possibility of both fanboys and haters just duking it out below. But there’s always that one guy who has a fkn well-formatted paragraph of gold. I await that guy.
Apple is good at making existing tech usable by people who don’t have time to bother learning the new tech.
Hard disagree. Android user here. The number of times if had to show iPhone users how to use their shit is annoying.
Workflows agree no better on a fruit phone than an Android device half the price.
Now, do you think that’s because iOS is inherently worse than Android, or because Apple have been more successful at targeting people who don’t want to fanny about with their tech? Not trying to perpetuate a Android/iOS war, btw. I recognise that choice is good, and am happy to fuck about with the Android things I need to use at work.
I think Apple knows its customers really well, and caters to them in a way that winds up feeling exclusionary to a lot of folks that have a hard preference for Android for mobile, or Linux or Windows for PC. Apple builds products and makes designs that meet the needs and wants of the people that use their products, and they do it very well. What an enthusiast might gripe about is a convenience for many others.
I think of it like features in a car, like traction control. Max Verstappen might prefer no traction control because he can control the car better without it, but Becky down the street doesn’t have that skill so having the feature on automatically is the better design, because there’s only one Max but thousands of Beckys. Max has the alternative of going out and buying a race car or sports car that meets his needs, but it doesn’t really make sense for him to bitch about how much Becky’s car sucks because it automatically turns on traction control.
WiFi is automatically on, and only paused from control center, because it’s a better experience for most of Apple’s users. Almost all use-cases are that the user wants to turn WiFi off temporarily, but having it turn fully off makes it so that it’s more likely for the user to forget to turn it back on and burn their mobile data. Most of us have had that experience. But, since Apple rolled out that feature, it hasn’t happened to me, which I see as a better user experience. I understand that’s not what many others want, and that’s fine. It just tells me iOS isn’t for them.
I’ve gotta be honest, it feels like it takes several more steps to do anything on iOS than on Android. Finding anything is a chore, it’s slow in favor of long animations, and settings are so far out of the way or non-existent, that it’s so difficult to troubleshoot issues.
Personally, I don’t think iOS is any easier than Android, it’s just that Apple strips away everything that your grandparents don’t need, but that regular users could really benefit from.
Oh yeah for sure, like actually disabling wifi is a 3 step process, wtf. If you’re a fan of what android can provide, you’ll probably run into many grievances on an iphone. But here are a few examples I can think of what iphones do better or easier than any android:
iCloud/iTunes phone backups: either automatically through the cloud or manually using a pc, but taking a full backup and restoring them has always been easier. Using iCloud is by far the easiest, for a price ofcourse, a full backup continuously safe from loss or damage. Same with your pictures and personal data. Google and samsung now provide similar services, but apples’ is more complete and hassle free. They also provide a fully free temporary backup for 30 days so you can sell your current device with no data loss at all.
Transfering to a new iphone: kind of the same as backups but the transfer process is at least half the amount of steps and is so much more beginner friendly than android, samsung takes a strong second place with smart switch and oppo a third with clone phone. But apples is without fail the most complete.
Interdevice connectivity: also mostly an icloud advantage but if you have more than one apple device or trying to send data to another iphone, airdrop and icloud have always been the most seamless. Other android services are coming close, but nothing can beat the apple ecosystem, at least not yet.
Basic stability: the optimization of memory and cpu usage has greatly improved the stability and longevity of iphones, by having very strict rules on what 3rd party apps can do on the device. Also increases the amount of performance they get out of the phone as a whole.
App store: has always been much less garbage and malware. By having a strict review process I’ve never seen an application doing to a persons phone what some android apps are still doing to this day. Tricking the user into allowing full device control some apps litter phones with ads, spam and malware, bad form Google.
For the record, I hate apple as much as the next lemming, but I acknowledge what they to well. And what they do, goddamnit they do it well. People will always be confused by technology, but apple does such a good job making very complex functionality accessible to the masses. Functionality on literally any other platform would require extra software, extra configuration, extra effort.