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I came back to the iPhone after 6 years and 3 Android flagships when iOS 16 was the latest version out and was quite shocked at the state I found it in. It’s WAY buggier than Android, but it’s mostly just riddled with very unpleasant UI glitches.
I can’t remember the last time it completely froze on me though, while on Android that has happened to me, and I’m comparing to high end devices in the same price range. iPhones you just lock and unlock and the glitch is gone even if it acts like it’s completely frozen and the screen doesn’t respond.
The cameras on Androids are less predictable too. On the iPhone I just know the kind of shot I’ll get before I take the phone out to shoot. The Samsungs still are bad in that regard afaik. That kind of stuff is what’s still keeping me around.
 
well i left android for the first time with the iphone 16 having had android pritty much ever since it was released. I got fed up of google or the manufacturer removing things from android and even worse manufactures putting all their own junk on it so it was a constant battle between android apps and their app.

The thing I love about iOS so far is its standard with no advertising / no facebook forced on you / no samsung or other phone company junk on it.

For example the one feature android use to have was not allow random calls if people were not in the address book. That was removed several versions ago but yet its in iOS. Such a simple feature to stop spam calls and nuisance calls.

I use to use automation on android but no they then started to lock that down more and more and not allow certain things to be accessed. Then in the latest version constantly getting reminders about its going to deep sleep this app and O this app has not been used for a while so we are going to remove all the privileges you gave it.

I am sure iOS is no where near perfect but so far from my switch I would have it over android any day.
 
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I couldn’t agree more. I just spent time at BestBuy playing with the base model S24 from Samsung. Comparing the screen scrolling and general responsiveness to my 15 Pro Max, I thought something was wrong with my phone. I went to the new 16 Pros and they were just as bad as my phone. Lagging scrolling, dropping frames, slow in comparison.

I asked the BestBuy phone person if they did anything to the Samsung phones to make them “extra” responsive??? He asked, “no, why?” I told him it was running circles around my IPhone 15 Pro Max. He laughed and said, “ya, it’s been like that with Android for awhile.”

There’s other things too with IOS between design choices and functions where I think Apple has been left behind as well. But it’s pretty sad when the base model S24 outperforms Apple high end phones.
 
Yeah, I have to say that I have grudgingly admitted to myself that I am willing to consider Android again. Not only does iOS 18 seem unstable in general (plenty of freezes and hiccups) but the Photos app is a mess, RCS has made messaging unreliable, synching of Messages and email through iCloud is equally unreliable, and I sometimes feel like I’m on drugs when using Apple Car Play.

Just today, when I asked for directions to a given location, I was told Location Services needed to be turned on (it already was). Then Siri said she needed to know where I was located and that I had to go into settings to change my security choices. I did nothing of the sort.

Most of the complaints about Apple on MR have focused on features that Apple doesn’t offer. But, now, it’s getting so that I can no longer trust the OS. Believe me, I have no illusions about Windows and Android. But those who keep glossing over Apple’s growing problems by saying ”It’s still better than the competition” are whistling past the graveyard.

It used to be that one turned on Apple devices and they just worked - correctly. That is no longer true. What’s more, this is the kind of thing that, if left uncorrected for long, can bring down even the biggest companies.
 
The ecosystem is now greater than the phones and OS.
While I was later to iPhone (starting at 4) than the OP, things are a lot more convoluted now.
And probably none of us have truly "started over" - we have 15+ years of content, settings, and Apple Account stuff layered in, coupled with dozens of apps - many 1GB+ in local file size - hitting the network nonstop...
But much of Apple's revenue is tied up in iPhone, so they better figure it out.

I have no problem with iOS 18 on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. It's actually better than iOS 17 was.

p.s. - people missed BlackBerry and Palm/Treo.
I had an Android company phone for 4 years and it mostly sat on my desk.
 
Whether you like or hate Google, the Pixel lineup has completely overtaken apple this year.

Android 14 was already quite far ahead of iOS in terms of responsiveness and smoothness, but android 15 has taken it to another level.

Very light on features but get this... They dedicated an entire OS upgrade to mainly bug fixing and optimisation. Crazy concept for Tim Apple and his crew.

iOS and MacOS haven't been smooth for 5+ years now btw. The issues with iPhone 16 and iOS 18 are nothing new. It's great that people are finally taking off those fruit coloured spectacles though.

Sadly the only way apple will ever invest any actual funds into their software teams is if people start switching away from iOS... So you're basically stuck with a mess of an OS maintained by a skeleton crew.
 
The ecosystem is now greater than the phones and OS.
While I was later to iPhone (starting at 4) than the OP, things are a lot more convoluted now.
And probably none of us have truly "started over" - we have 15+ years of content, settings, and Apple Account stuff layered in, coupled with dozens of apps - many 1GB+ in local file size - hitting the network nonstop...
But much of Apple's revenue is tied up in iPhone, so they better figure it out.

I have no problem with iOS 18 on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. It's actually better than iOS 17 was.

p.s. - people missed BlackBerry and Palm/Treo.
I had an Android company phone for 4 years and it mostly sat on my desk.
Always find it hilarious when people throw around the "ecosystem" line.

What you actually mean to say is, you backed yourself into a corner by using mostly first party services that could disappear at any moment and the anti competitive practices of that first party have made it near impossible to switch to anything else.

"Ecosystem", how cute.
 
android 15 has taken it to another level.

Very light on features but get this... They dedicated an entire OS upgrade to mainly bug fixing and optimisation. Crazy concept
I love Android, but this is just the same hyperbole that could have been said for Android 14 and Android 13. It will also probably slide into place for Android 16. Most every Android feature bullet point lately has been about folding phones or AI. Very light on new features since the big Material You splash. I'm not hating on Android, but it is a very slow-moving evolution and makes for very boring keynotes. Apple takes big leaps that people love or hate, but it is always entertaining.
 
I love Android, but this is just the same hyperbole that could have been said for Android 14 and Android 13. It will also probably slide into place for Android 16. Most every Android feature bullet point lately has been about folding phones or AI. Very light on new features since the big Material You splash. I'm not hating on Android, but it is a very slow-moving evolution and makes for very boring keynotes. Apple takes big leaps that people love or hate, but it is always entertaining.

Because there's almost nothing that can be added to smartphones, so it makes sense to focus on stability and fixes.

Also name me one "big leap" Apple have made since Jobs passed? "Inventing" ChatGPT and augmented reality don't count. All they've done for the last few years is backport old Android features and make new attempts at locking people onto their devices.
 
Because there's almost nothing that can be added to smartphones, so it makes sense to focus on stability and fixes.

Also name me one "big leap" Apple have made since Jobs passed? "Inventing" ChatGPT and augmented reality don't count. All they've done for the last few years is backport old Android features and make new attempts at locking people onto their devices.
What else are you supposed to do with a rectangle?
 
I hate that Photo app. It's not intuitive and incredibly buggy. Sometimes it won't display all photos, the last few are missing and you have to kill the Photos app and restart it to see your last taken pics.
And the scrolling it's a PITA. Sometimes it won't let you scroll up unless you swipe like crazy for a few seconds. I've never seen such a flawed Photos app.
 
I haven’t used android since like 2012, but I can full agree that ios18 is TERRIBLE. Glitchy and crashy. It’s awful

Photos app has been utterly destroyed. I’m considering going to Synology photos app full time for photo viewing and what not. Cancel my iCloud subscription. It’s brutal
 
I haven’t used android since like 2012, but I can full agree that ios18 is TERRIBLE. Glitchy and crashy. It’s awful

Photos app has been utterly destroyed. I’m considering going to Synology photos app full time for photo viewing and what not. Cancel my iCloud subscription. It’s brutal
Same, I used the photos app in both beta and release and it was the same, absolutely awful. I reverted back to 17.7, and am learning synology photos or immich because it's going to be exactly like that in subsequent ios releases.
 
Dear all,

I have owned every iPhone since 2007 and appreciated the simplicity and stability they provided in real-life use. As a journalist and reviewer for a popular mobile innovation magazine back in early 2000s, I have tested over 160 phones with different operating systems incl. Java, Symbian, Bada, Windows, Android etc. and iOS always stood out as something truly special. It was a system you could rely on for functionality, organization, smoothness, perfection, and beauty.

The same applied to all the Macs, MacBook Pros, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, and other products I've had at home since the 90s. I loved Apple for this and recommended its products to all my friends who were looking for quality, speed, and technology that just works.

Whether I was simply scrolling through news, listening to music, or playing heavy games, iOS was always a model of perfection - no lags, no crashes, no issues - especially compared to Android. In the well-known battle between these systems, there was always a clear winner for me.

I’ve been comparing iOS and Android since Donut 1.6, and today, with the release of Vanilla Ice Cream 15, I’ve seen how both have evolved. I’ve tried every Samsung Galaxy and other top-tier phones, always hoping to see Android improve on its lags, freezes, and crashes while offering an alternative with interesting design features that iPhones didn't have.

For many years, starting in 2007, iOS updates brought new features while remaining stable, smooth, and lag-free. Every year I bought the new iPhone, and since 2019, I’ve opted for the iPhone Pro.

This year, I got the iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 18, and for the first time in my long experience of living without lags, performance issues, freezes, and crashes, I am truly disappointed. There has been an insane drop in multiple layers of quality, simplicity, reliability, and stability in iOS. iOS 18 feels like Android Eclair to me. It’s as if we've gone back more than 10 years to an unstable system, with constant freezes, unresponsive buttons, screens that don't react, crashing apps, poorly optimized standard apps, and terrible lags everywhere.

Take the Photos app, for example. Once a beautifully organized space for media that I used multiple times every hour, it’s been updated into something completely illogical and unacceptable.

At a team event last week, we had multiple iPhones 16 and 16 Pro running iOS 18. We took pictures, and when we wanted to view them, the app only displayed tiny images, and we couldn’t rotate them nor do anything without restarting the phone — experiencing lags that had never occurred before. This was not an isolated issue with just my device. I have dozens of such examples, and I won’t even go into the bizarre camera button placement or the software, which feels like a bad joke.

The overall performance of iOS 18 is terrible. Nothing feels like an iPhone anymore - nothing is smooth, and there are constant lags and slowdowns. Apps don’t display properly, and the experience is far below what I’ve come to expect.

I don’t know if others feel the same way about iOS 18, but for me, I am now eagerly awaiting iOS 19 and the iPhone 17, whether Air or not.

I hope to see Apple return to the right direction, or this may be my last year using iOS, which, shockingly, now feels worse than Android 💔

Best Regards,
Loyal Apple customer and fan since the 90s
iOS 18 is still in “public beta”, hence, please expect various issues for now. There is no return to the old days. As the increase cpu and cheaper hardware, the software (os and apps) tend to ignore their lean & efficient codes. This happened to (almost) every software company. Personally, I always keep my Apple devices 1-2 minor versions behind. I also avoid installing until the major version reached .3 or .4.
 
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Haha, my reaction to my iPhone 16 Pro vs. the old iPhone 8 that I had is directly opposite of yours. I was reluctant to pop for the $$$ cuz, well, the iPhone 8 made calls pretty much just fine, and I liked the Home button and touch ID. But I've found the 16 Pro to be just a dream to use by comparison, and everything (well almost everything) is light-years ahead of the old (at least) iOS the 8 was limited to using.

Only problem I have with my system now, which includes the latest Ultra watche(s cuz Wife has same as me) is that the Do Not Disturb (Focus) is letting alerts get thru in the dead-of-night. I will readily admit that at least so far I've found the Focus options and settings to be completely impenetrable. C'mon Apple, do better.

I also have a set of Airpod Pro 2nd gen in a box that I'm almost afraid to open. Way WAY too many settings in too many different places...
My spouse is having the same issue with DND going through while she's working. I don't know how to stop it or change it.
 
Dear all,

I have owned every iPhone since 2007 and appreciated the simplicity and stability they provided in real-life use. As a journalist and reviewer for a popular mobile innovation magazine back in early 2000s, I have tested over 160 phones with different operating systems incl. Java, Symbian, Bada, Windows, Android etc. and iOS always stood out as something truly special. It was a system you could rely on for functionality, organization, smoothness, perfection, and beauty.
[....]
Loyal Apple customer and fan since the 90s
You can be a iphone user with a PC, or a mac user with a android (or other phone system), i don't know if it would "expell" you from macrumor church ;)

as you said, 90s and 00s years were the best periods, as a kid the IT/computing and devices really at the user's service. Now it's not a device problem, but much more a services ******tment, as some people says.
thats why, to leave out a bit android (that i hate), hackers did better than BSD teams (while iOS/macos is partly-freebsd-based, with mach and xnu):

in addition, for me (and lot of apple fanboys) the SJ era is huge better than apple now, as ex engineers (serlet, tevanian, hullot) were just doing good work, until the beginning of the 2010 (and now disaster for lot of details)
my 12 cents.
 
You can be a iphone user with a PC, or a mac user with a android (or other phone system), i don't know if it would "expell" you from macrumor church ;)

as you said, 90s and 00s years were the best periods, as a kid the IT/computing and devices really at the user's service. Now it's not a device problem, but much more a services ******tment, as some people says.
thats why, to leave out a bit android (that i hate), hackers did better than BSD teams (while iOS/macos is partly-freebsd-based, with mach and xnu):

in addition, for me (and lot of apple fanboys) the SJ era is huge better than apple now, as ex engineers (serlet, tevanian, hullot) were just doing good work, until the beginning of the 2010 (and now disaster for lot of details)
my 12 cents.
I agree with you. I remember a year around that timeframe where the best windows laptop was a macbook pro with boot camp. I loved that 2008 - 2015 line of macbook pros...
 
Steve was realistic and what he demostrated and promised in keynotes was not only delivered on time but exceeded expectations by far.
Not always…
Push Notifications ended up shipping nine months after they were scheduled to under Jobs, and Mobile Me was a disaster.
Not to mention to parallel the Photos redesign, under Jobs there was the controversial launches of both “iMovie 2008” and “FinalCut Pro X”.
The former led to Apple having to allow downloads of the previous version of iMovie 2006 because people were so upset.
Also Steve delayed things as well, Mac OS X Leopard ship about a year after originally promised, the white iPhone 4 shipped almost a year after originally promised.
 
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I didn’t have stutter issues with iOS 18.1 betas I jumped a month ago. This is on iPhone 15 Pro Max. All is good except the dreaded photos app. It makes me struggle to find photos I clicked just a few seconds ago as they sometimes just don’t show up. The diversity hire person who came up with this wretched app needs to be fired ASAP.
 
Add to this that MacOS also have many framedrops/stutters problems.

In the past i thought that iOS and MacOS devices was so good in terms of smoothness, and it was the main reason why I bought MacBook and IPhone in 2020.

But I was shocked, that actual on that time Apple devices was so laggy, so many framedrops in system animations (on both OS) and scrolling (on MacOS almost). Seriously, in my opinion smoothness of UI is key. Why they add 100500 new emojis and not important features, but don’t speed up OS!?
 
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