Moving on from iOS

[dk001]

Been an iOS user, developer (years past), tester, reviewer, etc…. Have used a MBP and an iPad. AW user also.

With the dissatisfaction I have been experiencing over the past few years, I have sold my last iPhone and am selling my AWU. Gifted my MBP. Keeping my iPad Pro 11 (M4). Still the best, IMO, tablet for me. Consumption 😂.

What got me there …
I took a hard look at my workstream and personal use and found that Windows, Linux, and Android fit my use case far better.
I use a Pixel 9 Pro Fold for work. Gives me a phone and tablet all in one. I accomplish more and with less effort than my 15 ProMax.
For work laptop I use Windows and Linux.

Personal use is a bit different. I do contract work (ERP) on a part time basis and my last MacOS customer has retired. My other customers use Windows. Not adding new customers as I will retire in a very few years.
For a personal phone I am currently using a Galaxy S25Plus. My personal laptop is a Galaxy Book. My watch, when I wear one, is a Garmin Epix.

Then add in AI. It has its use cases and for the most part has replaced Google Assistant (using Gemini and Grok). Apple really dropped the ball here.

End of the day, Apple no longer fits my needs. If anyone has any questions on transitioning out of the Apple ecosystem, ask. I’ll still be around as a couple of things here (photos) still are very interesting.

 

[mjschabow]

Month 3 of doing the same. The best is when you get to the point where you not only realize that there are better options out there, but you start to realize how evil of a company they are.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

Congratulations. I just did something similar with Microsoft. I finally got rid of my last vestiges of MS after cutting over to Mac in 2015 by getting rid of Office. Libre Office works just fine and doesn’t require that I use their cloud. I’m going to stick with Apple for a while because of the infrastructure and security. Eventually I will move to a desktop Linux distro though.. Apple hasn’t pissed me off enough yet and I’m fundamentally lazy.

 

[dk001]

Congratulations. I just did something similar with Microsoft. I finally got rid of my last vestiges of MS after cutting over to Mac in 2015 by getting rid of Office. Libre Office works just fine and doesn’t require that I use their cloud. I’m going to stick with Apple for a while because of the infrastructure and security. Eventually I will move to a desktop Linux distro though.. Apple hasn’t pissed me off enough yet and I’m fundamentally lazy.

My challenge is work is almost ALL MS. Best of luck

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

I know the feeling. I have 3 windows monitors in front of me now.. most of my work is on Linux but the clients use windows and I air gap though a windows client.

 

[HouseLannister]

Jealous of those who can go Linux. I've been a Windows gamer since the 90s and the Mac never appealed to me. But I would consider Linux if there was better Bazzite/SteamOS support for desktop PCs. As I understand it, I can't get fan control or HDR in SteamOS right now. And I have zero idea what kind of performance I would get out of my 4080 in Linux.

I have a friend who I do app testing for on iOS and Android, so I always have a foot in both worlds. I rock an iPhone and a Pixel. But since eSIM became a thing, I don't have a SIM in the Pixel. (Mint will charge you $3 to switch back and forth after the first couple times a year and that gets old real fast.) Looking forward to comparing the upcoming rumored Pixel Sense stuff to the very delayed Siri Apple Intelligence later this year. Might get me to do a more permanent SIM swap.

For tablets I still go iPad. With Android getting better and better with larger screens (thanks to folding phones mostly), I might try an Android tablet again next time I have some spare cash.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

I had a Samsung tablet when I had a droid. Didn’t really find it all that useful. Then again, that was well over 15 years ago.

 

[HouseLannister]

I had a Samsung tablet when I had a droid. Didn’t really find it all that useful. Then again, that was well over 15 years ago.

It wasn't that long ago, was it? The Motorola Xoom was 2011 (Android Honeycomb). I worked at a Verizon Wireless back then and got one for free and still didn't want to use it.

 

[Hajj.david]

Jealous of those who can go Linux. I've been a Windows gamer since the 90s and the Mac never appealed to me. But I would consider Linux if there was better Bazzite/SteamOS support for desktop PCs. As I understand it, I can't get fan control or HDR in SteamOS right now. And I have zero idea what kind of performance I would get out of my 4080 in Linux.

I have a friend who I do app testing for on iOS and Android, so I always have a foot in both worlds. I rock an iPhone and a Pixel. But since eSIM became a thing, I don't have a SIM in the Pixel. (Mint will charge you $3 to switch back and forth after the first couple times a year and that gets old real fast.) Looking forward to comparing the upcoming rumored Pixel Sense stuff to the very delayed Siri Apple Intelligence later this year. Might get me to do a more permanent SIM swap.

For tablets I still go iPad. With Android getting better and better with larger screens (thanks to folding phones mostly), I might try an Android tablet again next time I have some spare cash.

macOS is literally Unix if you want linux so bad why not just use macOS so you get professionally developed unix instead of dealing with linux and its hodgepodge amateur hour developers that make a mess every so often and everything is a massive PITA to maintain.

 

[cjsuk]

macOS is literally Unix if you want linux so bad why not just use macOS so you get professionally developed unix instead of dealing with linux and its hodgepodge amateur hour developers that make a mess every so often and everything is a massive PITA to maintain.

Nailed it.

Just spent 2 years trying to get something trivial fixed in a Linux distribution to no avail.

There is of course FreeBSD still.

 

[HouseLannister]

macOS is literally Unix if you want linux so bad why not just use macOS so…

… you can’t play video games.

Did you even read what I said?

 

[FatLouie]

Been using Linux for a number of years now, no regrets. With all that has gone on with Apple AI, useless updates for eye candy, etc. my iPhone 15+ is my last IOS device and I will go Android on the next phone. I will keep my iPad M4 Pro, hard to give it up to be honest.

 

[FatLouie]

Nailed it.

Just spent 2 years trying to get something trivial fixed in a Linux distribution to no avail.

There is of course FreeBSD still.

Lack of information there. What distribution, what needed fixing, are you a developer, were your needs specific to only you?

 

[LeeW]

I have used Linux (remote servers) every day for the last couple of decades. I love working in the command line and with Linux, although I would never consider it on a desktop or laptop—not that I haven't tried. It's just not usable for anything other than very standard, non-specific needs. It has come a long way since I first started using it all those years ago, just not far enough for me, and it never will, by design.

That is why I use Mac, because it's as close as you will get to Linux. However, WSL has come a long way on Windows, just not as simple.

I want an OS that gets out of my way and just works, that's not Linux, for me.

 

[Yimbaz]

I'm in the same boat. My iPhone works fine so I won't be switching over any time soon, but if Apple keeps on the path they're on now I'm sure my next phone will be a Pixel. I'm not under any illusions about the ethics of supporting one megacorp over another, just tired of Apple slipping on one banana peel after another.

 

[cjsuk]

Lack of information there. What distribution, what needed fixing, are you a developer, were your needs specific to only you?

I'm all out of energy to explain it the 50th time past cloud-init + RHEL.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

It wasn't that long ago, was it? The Motorola Xoom was 2011 (Android Honeycomb). I worked at a Verizon Wireless back then and got one for free and still didn't want to use it.

Damn, I have no idea. It’s been at least 12 years.. my daughter was still in High School and she’s 31 now.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

I have used Linux (remote servers) every day for the last couple of decades. I love working in the command line and with Linux, although I would never consider it on a desktop or laptop—not that I haven't tried. It's just not usable for anything other than very standard, non-specific needs. It has come a long way since I first started using it all those years ago, just not far enough for me, and it never will, by design.

That is why I use Mac, because it's as close as you will get to Linux. However, WSL has come a long way on Windows, just not as simple.

I want an OS that gets out of my way and just works, that's not Linux, for me.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Same here, Linux/Unix server for about 20 years. Before that, AIX/VAX/MVS/VMS. Apple has some things that both like and hate simultaneously… like the file system separating content and metadata. It’s great for indexing but you can’t just copy a file off without an interface without running .dot_clean which re-merges the content and metadata. But you hit the nail on the head, generally it just gets out of my way.

 

[DankeBrutus]

Jealous of those who can go Linux. I've been a Windows gamer since the 90s and the Mac never appealed to me. But I would consider Linux if there was better Bazzite/SteamOS support for desktop PCs. As I understand it, I can't get fan control or HDR in SteamOS right now. And I have zero idea what kind of performance I would get out of my 4080 in Linux.

I've been gaming on Linux since 2020. I have overall had a great experience with it. Having said that, while I started with Nvidia I ended up going with AMD in 2021/22 so that has coloured my experience with Linux gaming. I have been around the block with distros but ended up on Fedora Workstation for 2 years, installed Bazzite this past August and have been quite impressed with it as my first real college try at an immutable distro.

Nvidia is tricky though. It is a case where, from what I hear, the drivers are continuously improving but not at the same pace as Intel and AMD drivers. To Nvidia the only desktop GPU drivers worth working on are Windows, which does make sense obviously, so Linux drivers are getting better but that is highly dependent on time spent. Some people apparently have zero issues with their Nvidia cards though. May be worth installing Bazzite or something on a secondary NVME and giving it a shot in a dual boot.

It's just not usable for anything other than very standard, non-specific needs. It has come a long way since I first started using it all those years ago, just not far enough for me, and it never will, by design.

In all honesty I have sort of begun feeling that after 5 years of using desktop Linux. There is a lot of great stuff there. KDE Plasma and GNOME are competent Desktop Environments. I would argue that GNOME rivals macOS in aesthetic and KDE Plasma rivals Windows in usability. I have a lot of praise for both. Desktop Linux is in always in a state of "better than ever" and "not quite there yet." But Windows is awful so I hesitate to install it again.

 

[LeeW]

Desktop Linux is in always in a state of "better than ever" and "not quite there yet." But Windows is awful so I hesitate to install it again.

Yup, that. Linux is always improving, and for many, it works well. I can understand why they prefer and are happy with it. But when I use an OS and have to immediately go, ok this won't work out of the box, what is my workaround? I'm out when I am doing that, not just once but multiple times.

One of my friends who uses only Linux is constantly justifying it to me despite the number of workarounds he has to do to make some things work, he has 3 VMs running on VirtualBox on top of Linux, for example. No, I'm out.

 

[spunkystrawberries]

Bye! 😀

Seriously tho, I always say you should do what works best for you. Wishing you all the best!

 

[uacd]

Is that your first time switching?
Because I had done it twice.

Total regret and then comeback to iOS. And there are several reasons for me to do that which may or may not be relevant to you:

1. Everyone I know uses an iPhone. It is very convenient to use FaceTime to communicate since it provides best quality and works on all my devices. Best contender is WhatsApp but I don’t like call quality;

2. Applications. Over the course of my life I purchases many useful apps on iOS. Btw just bought one today, a brilliant photo editor – IrixHDR. And I could not find even nearly similar apps on Android for that, most were either buggy or had small featureset. Its all fun and games until it comes to actual photo editing on Android;

3. Camera features. Apple has best camera features and their cameras actually work fast comparing to other manufacturer. I came from DSLR world and I expect to capture the exact moment when I click on shutter button. Android phones unfortunately always lagged for me in this regard, but maybe shutter lag is different across brands, don’t know and have no money to test this hypothesis😆

4. AirDrop. What do you mean Android has no AirDrop??? I can’t live without it! Imagine if you need to send data from first-gen iPad Air (2013) to something new? Almost no apps work for that, and I can just use old good AirDrop and get my files in full quality in seconds. Especially good on new iPhones where you just move one iPhone to another, it magically vibrates and sends, like those nostalgic IR port days😄 Yeah I know Android has Bluetooth, but it is not ideal to have to deal with all of that to just send some photos back and forth.


But since you have already made your decision and sold your stuff I wish you only the best of luck. If its your first time you just need to feel it to understand fully

 

[chargerinthebox]

Is that your first time switching?
Because I had done it twice.

Total regret and then comeback to iOS. And there are several reasons for me to do that which may or may not be relevant to you:

1. Everyone I know uses an iPhone. It is very convenient to use FaceTime to communicate since it provides best quality and works on all my devices. Best contender is WhatsApp but I don’t like call quality;

2. Applications. Over the course of my life I purchases many useful apps on iOS. Btw just bought one today, a brilliant photo editor – IrixHDR. And I could not find even nearly similar apps on Android for that, most were either buggy or had small featureset. Its all fun and games until it comes to actual photo editing on Android;

3. Camera features. Apple has best camera features and their cameras actually work fast comparing to other manufacturer. I came from DSLR world and I expect to capture the exact moment when I click on shutter button. Android phones unfortunately always lagged for me in this regard, but maybe shutter lag is different across brands, don’t know and have no money to test this hypothesis😆

4. AirDrop. What do you mean Android has no AirDrop??? I can’t live without it! Imagine if you need to send data from first-gen iPad Air (2013) to something new? Almost no apps work for that, and I can just use old good AirDrop and get my files in full quality in seconds. Especially good on new iPhones where you just move one iPhone to another, it magically vibrates and sends, like those nostalgic IR port days😄 Yeah I know Android has Bluetooth, but it is not ideal to have to deal with all of that to just send some photos back and forth.


But since you have already made your decision and sold your stuff I wish you only the best of luck. If its your first time you just need to feel it to understand fully

Long time Android user who only switched to iOS last year and I love it, despite the many glitches. You forgot to mention Spotlight which is huge if you use reminders / calendars / notes. It's just one global context and you can find so many things you didn't know you were looking for by searching for terms.

 

[nathansz]

I want an OS that gets out of my way and just works, that's not Linux, for me.

Exactly.

For desktop use it’s great if you have a lot of time you want to spend screwing around to get things to work. I’ve definitely been down that path just for kicks.

But if you want to actually use your computer for much beyond screwing around with the os, then Linux has never been the ticket for me.

 

[williamofockham]

congratulations , I've been an apple user since apple 2 days, used windows or linux when the client required such operating systems. retired, my game is bridge so graphics cards are not much of an issue, buy and use what suits you
let him that want none get none, let it be his reward rather than his punishment