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Looking To Move Off Apple Platform
- Thread starter Mikeeee
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So I took my first step last week and bought a Samsung S21. So far I'm very happy with it.
It performs equally as well as my iPhone 12 Pro. Maybe a little more peppy. I'm really enjoying the flexibility of the operating system. So many tweaks and options.
Between the 2 phones, my preference right now is walking around with the Samsung. I now have my eye on the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 Classic. 👀
The journey continues...
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Personally, there's really nothing that beats an iPad or iPad Pro, but if the only thing that can come closest imo, is the Surface Pro, simply because you can run full desktop apps. Plus with the advent of windows 11, tablet mode is much better.
My customized lock screen. 😘
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IMac - Build your own SFF PC with AMD iGPU APU since dGPU are hard to find then add dGPU when they become more available. If you want to multiboot MacOS get AMD 6800, 6800xt or 6900xt dGPU.
Apple TV Replacement - Amazon Fire TV 4K Max or 4K non-Max which plays Apple TV fine (Apple TV app is currently crashing on some shows with Chromecast with Google TV).
iPad Pro - Galaxy Tab S7+ or S7 with at least 256GB storage since it has 8GB vs 6GB RAM. More freedom and polish than iPad Pro M1. S7+ 8GB/256GB with free Buds Pro is currently $493 with $200 trade-in of junky iPad 1, iPad 2, etc. with edu/epp/military discount.
Airport - Wait for WIFI 6E with new 6GHz channels, 10Gb plus 2.5Gb LAN ports.
https://www.wi-fi.org/beacon/the-be...i-fi-6e-devices-driving-technology-innovation
Apple TV Replacement - Amazon Fire TV 4K Max or 4K non-Max which plays Apple TV fine (Apple TV app is currently crashing on some shows with Chromecast with Google TV).
iPad Pro - Galaxy Tab S7+ or S7 with at least 256GB storage since it has 8GB vs 6GB RAM. More freedom and polish than iPad Pro M1. S7+ 8GB/256GB with free Buds Pro is currently $493 with $200 trade-in of junky iPad 1, iPad 2, etc. with edu/epp/military discount.
Airport - Wait for WIFI 6E with new 6GHz channels, 10Gb plus 2.5Gb LAN ports.
https://www.wi-fi.org/beacon/the-be...i-fi-6e-devices-driving-technology-innovation
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Samsung was the one that gained my interest after iOS 7 came out. I can certainly understand why someone would move from Apple to Samsung. They got all the benefits but even more benefits such as more customization and backward compatibility. In addition, your S21 will have that lovely 120hz refresh rate, which makes those gesture swipes really fly. The only thing missing on the Galaxy Watch that has no proper replacement yet, is the 'radio' app. There's no way to open an app to select a say, 80s or 90s hits playlist. You get Spotify, but that's more like Pandora, in that it plays songs similar to one you tell it to play. There used to be a great rotating bezel style radio app called Samsung Milk Music which could do what Apple's radio app did, but for some odd reason Samsung up and kill't it.
Oh I 100% agree. Honestly, I have all 3 and my iPP is my go to … but Surface is great for full apps. Unfortunatel, surface tablet mode is horrible. I was just trying to give OP options besides iPP. File system on surface and android are a little bette unfortunately.
Update:
Well my wandering eye just took a 180 degree turn. Went to the Ultra. After 5 days determined the lack of uniformity (had to clear notifications in 3 places, etc..)and constant hassling of 3 vendors to use their apps was a deal breaker. Some backed up my data to the cloud without my permission. It’s tough enough to trust 1 vendor (Apple), but now I need to trust 3.
Also picked up 1password and even used a script to transfer 837 passwords from apple’s keychain to a file easily importable to 1passord. The problem was 1 password doesn’t always work when you need it to. Now that I needed password uniformity over OS, Windows, iOs, Android, Apple TV and iPad OS, it sometimes just didn’t do the job. So with all of that I decided to return the Ultra and picked up the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The customizations were great and I love the Ultra but the customizations by 3rd party apps sometimes overlapped something that wasn’t going away. Lack of uniformity. Reminded me why I took to Apple in the first place.
So as Michael Corleone famously said “ Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
See you in 10 years when I pop up to take another look.
Well my wandering eye just took a 180 degree turn. Went to the Ultra. After 5 days determined the lack of uniformity (had to clear notifications in 3 places, etc..)and constant hassling of 3 vendors to use their apps was a deal breaker. Some backed up my data to the cloud without my permission. It’s tough enough to trust 1 vendor (Apple), but now I need to trust 3.
Also picked up 1password and even used a script to transfer 837 passwords from apple’s keychain to a file easily importable to 1passord. The problem was 1 password doesn’t always work when you need it to. Now that I needed password uniformity over OS, Windows, iOs, Android, Apple TV and iPad OS, it sometimes just didn’t do the job. So with all of that I decided to return the Ultra and picked up the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The customizations were great and I love the Ultra but the customizations by 3rd party apps sometimes overlapped something that wasn’t going away. Lack of uniformity. Reminded me why I took to Apple in the first place.
So as Michael Corleone famously said “ Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
See you in 10 years when I pop up to take another look.
Only you know how much effort you used to overcome that issue. It seems to have only been 11 days since you initially started using the Samsung. That is nowhere near enough time to work out the kinks of any new device let alone a shift in platform.
Hey, it's ok if you want to go with something that "just works" for you. We all tend to gravitate to the things that we have a certain comfort level with.
As someone who wasn't heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem but made an incremental transition away from it... I can say that it takes a LONG time to do that. The less painful you want to make the transition, the longer it's going to take.
It will never be easy. The more time that passes, the more difficult it will be. It's a matter of how important it is for you to do that. If you decide to give it another try, let us know if and how we can help.
‘You’re absolutely right but after spending 11 days with The phone and knowing how much work I had already put in, I had to step back and consider if I want to work so hard to switch systems at this point. I realized I don’t.
It was a fun experience and I really like the Ultra (more then the IPhone 13 Max Pro), but my plan was to switch out all my Apple products, and after these 11 days decided to scrap it.
btw, 1 of the features I really liked was the ability to wirelessly run my phone on my bootcamped iMac running windows. Literally you can run your phone apps on the pc. Excellent feature.
Sadly most modern phones (and especially Samsung) have crammed tons of unnecessary system notifications into their phone OSs. They want to nag you to update the software all the time, use Samsung Accounts, or the Samsung Cloud, and Google constantly pings you 'have you tried the Google Assistant yet?' next to Samsung pinging you about Bixby and so forth. These can be turned off but it takes hours or days of work. I just said 'screw this' and went to a Samsung Galaxy SII (2011) and it's nag-free, speedy as I don't update stuff (and it's got my favorite version of Android--2.3, Gingerbread) and all I use a smartphone today anyway for is email, texting my girlfriend or family, taking notes, playing music (it works perfectly with Galaxy Buds Live!) and so on. Everything I need is already built in and more, so I don't need an app store. It's no longer supported by Google (Android 2.3 didn't actually depend on Google--that integration came later in software updates, and even more so in Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich) and I am not sure if the Amazon seller included a 10-year old battery or it was new because it goes 2 days total on a charge with medium use.
Would a Google Pixel work? That runs a vanilla version - there used to be custom versions of android, not sure id that's still thing
Seems like the Pixel a phones are great value. The problem is the longevity of support. The Pixel 4a will stop getting any updates (including security patches) by August 2023. So hopefully 2 years is good enough for your dad. After that, you would only rely on the Google Play system updates.
In contrast, Apple is still pushing security patches for iOS12 devices.
On the bright side, since Android is highly compartmentalised, individual apps will still be updated.
For most people outside the US, Google Pixel is not an option since Google doesn't even sell Pixel phones in many country. Samsung is the next best thing with their promise of 3 years of OS updates for most of their lineup.
I wouldn't own a pixel because I don't trust Google any more than Apple lately. I also think stock 'vanilla' or 'modern' versions of Android too bland, flat and boring. With vanilla I have to spend hours on an app store (I refuse to use Play Store) to replace or add back what would normally be pre-installed and that takes time setting up a device. With my SII, it was ready to go out the gate with more than I'd ever need and it feels complete, has plenty of depth to the UI and makes sense to me. I also have more privacy because Google was not yet integrated into the version of Android it came with, and Samsung made excellent UX for me. I've always been far more fond of TouchWiz (especially earlier versions) than OneUI or whatever the heck they call it today. Heck, my S20 FE didn't include a music player! what's that about?! Also at least two of my modern phones (Stylo 5, and S20 FE 5G) won't write to my SD card and complain constantly about it (saying your SD card has problems and is now set to read-only) but my SII writes fine to it. Go figure. It always seems I downgrade back to what I previously liked no matter what, so I'll stick here with my SII and ancient devices and keep the newer ones for the possible need when the old networks shut down. I still don't believe that's even going to happen given it was supposed to happen in 2018, 2019, 2020 and I can still activate and old phone fine. It's like that so-called e911 requirement that made it supposedly 'impossible' to use a Nokia 5185i in 2009, but I made it work anyway. They at first said it was about VoLTE, then about shutting down 3G, then it's about 5G. I don't think they have a clue and it's probably linked to whatever the World Economic Forum wants to track people with anyway. Either way I am prepared one way or another. I'd love to continue using the SII (and Note 10.1, Note 8.0, Tab 2 10.1 and 7) forever. Unlikely as one day even LTE will die, but Wifi might manage if I don't touch my routers. At least the modern phones are already set up and themed the way I like and de-idiot-proofed and de-Googled but there are issues with them reporting non-existant errors with my SD card, or outright refusing to read SD cards, or random issues and hiccups (not being able to text after not being restarted for a month). But I prefer the older stuff and 2011 felt far more future-thinking than the homogenized garbage of today that all looks the same. I'm sick of everything looking the same.
I've only had feature phones, but sometimes contemplate moving to a smart phone. At one point, the poor update policies for Android was a concern--but I've recently come to wonder if it really would make much difference. I can't imagine using a standard Android phone as anything more than a secondary device.
I remember hearing arguments that individual applications on computers might matter more than OS--although I'm sure this is highly debatable.
I have to admit...I don't think I'd want a Pixel, either.
But being fair, there are arguments in favor of the Pixel:
- At least the hardware and software come from one company. So it's only one company spying/collecting data. Not two (OS and actual phone maker).
- And some Pixels can be deGoogled with an OS like Graphene.
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Both platforms have its pros and cons as they approach longevity from different perspective.
Apple iOS: everything is monolithic. All the major apps like Safari, Mail, and Messages (the common vectors for security issues) are updated alongside the OS updates. The cons is if your device is dropped off support, you won't get updates to these apps any longer. The Pros, so far Apple has an excellent track record in longevity, with the 6S running for 6 years of software support.
Android: Due to the nature of Android fragmentation, Google took several steps to compartmentalised Android in terms of updates. The way Android get updates depend on many companies.
First, there's the major OS update. Google Pixel and Samsung currently have the best track record, promising 3 years of OS updates (a far cry from Apple, but a high standard on Android). The rest of the OEMs are only doing it on best effort basis, usually maxing out at just one OS update.
Second: there's the monthly security patches. This allows Google to patch security issues to older Android versions. Problem is, the standard that Google put is quite low, only requiring OEMs to provide security patches on a quarterly basis for 2 years to get certifications. Obviously most OEMs simply do the bare minimum. Google and Samsung, again, hold the best standard, providing monthly patches to Pixel and flagship Galaxy phones (and few A models) for at least 3 years. The rest are quarterly (including most Samsung phones) or just biannually.
Third: there's the Google Play Security updates. This allows Google to patch some things and even distribute new features to older devices. Eg. Nearby share (Android's version of AirDrop) was pushed to devices as old as Android 6.
Fourth: compartmentalisation of apps. Chrome, Google Messages app, GMail, etc are all available on the Play Store and can be updated independently of the phone's firmware. So even if your phone is outdated, the individual apps can still be updated via the Play Store. More and more OEMs are distributing their apps this way as well (eg. Samsung Internet Browser is available in the Play Store).
Last but not least, custom ROM. Old Android devices can gain new life through custom ROM running the latest Android version. The catch is, hardware support and stability is variable as you're relying on the community to work out the bugs. Also, most secure apps like banking apps will not support rooted/custom ROM devices.
In the end, you pick a platform that fits your needs. If you replace your phone every year or two, this argument is moot as you can go either one and you are good. It's just personal preference. But if you want to keep your phone for longer than 3 years, iPhone is your choice imo. We will see how the Pixel 6 will do as one bottleneck for Android updates is actually Qualcomm itself, as they only provide driver support for their SoC for a few years (they just announced 3 years of support I think, that shows their low standard). Pixel 6 will use Google's custom SoC, hinting that Google will match Apple for 5 years of software support.
Personally, I have a Galaxy S21 as my main phone since it has features that iOS will never have (eg. twin apps, built-in call recording). But at the same time, I have an iPhone 7+ for my banking apps as Apple has a better track record in what user data are exposed to 3rd party apps.
Why? Because they don't want big brother snooping on their devices. Maybe they're in the minority, maybe they're not but there are people who feel that Apple was invading their privacy, and wanting to access data on their devices without their permissions.