Just to take a recent HN front page example, the link to SyncThing. It says "Since Android phones, at least, are Linux-based, one need only set up a normal shell environment on it and put Syncthing there to achieve this goal; the process shouldn't take more than a day or so."
The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people.
[I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].
This sums up my return to the iPhone. I was an android user from 2012 to 2018. I loved messing with things, customizing, problem-solving when things would break.
And then eventually, I just... got over it. There were other things I'd rather spend my finite energy on. I wanted my phone to do phone things and do them well, and without me having to think about it.
I can understand when someone says they opted for macOS or Windows as they didn't want to struggle with Linux. But making the same argument for Android vs ios, doesn't hold. In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios - e.g. transferring a file from an iDevice to a non-Apple device. Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios. It's all the bundled adware / spyware crap that the phone manufacturers add to Android that often makes it lousy and gives it a bad name. (Google shares the blame for making it a spyware).
> In fact, you actually struggle and waste more time on ios
This hasn't been my experience
> Stock Android is just as mature and capable as ios
It's fine, but everything is just (imo) a little bit less cohesive and polished, and then there's the Google spyware, a shorter lifetime of updates, etc. And then if you aren't going off the beaten path and customizing stuff anyway, what are you actually gaining in exchange for those downsides?
I've given a clear example - try transfering a file from an iPhone or iPad to any non-Apple device, and you will waste a lot of time. Where as an Android or a Tizen or a Sailfish or Windows user only has to switch on Bluetooth and pair to transfer files with each other easily.
And what if your friend doesn't have it on their non-Apple device? You waste time because you have to use third-party solutions for something that is built-in the device but restricted due to the software (ios limiting Bluetooth or Wifi Transfer to not work non-Apple devices).
It's just not a problem I find myself running into. Probably part of that is because I don't need to share actual files with others very often these days, especially from my phone, aside from pictures which you can of course send over any messaging or media platform (including SMS). And for small non-image files there's always email.
I would add that when I had an Android phone I used the exact same strategies for transferring files.
It honestly sounds like you're getting upset about this relative to how you think it should work, and not relative to an actual practical barrier, so I'm going to withdraw from the conversation here
> It honestly sounds like you're getting upset about this relative to how you think it should work, and not relative to an actual practical barrier
Typical irritating Apple fan response - "It's not the device, it's your fault for not using the device as Apple intended.
Everyone knows that Apple locks down its devices to only work well within its eco system. But many don't like the fact that it doesn't work as well as with other devices, and this is where Android (and other mobile OS) shine over ios. With less than 50% marketshare, Apple device users do often run into this problem with others who have a non-Apple device.
- Cheaper. You can get great cheap android based photos from a lot of vendors
- Free app / games. You can sideload anything. You can find free really indie unique apps/games .
- Just using a cellphone means you are tracked. Murder someone with your phone and they will be able to track you. Apple collects data on you. I don't like it but accept that I am being spied on on any phone.
Same. I switched from iPhone/Mac to Android/Windows and sometimes refer to that period as my "rumspringa," as I eventually returned to Apple for all things "daily life" tech.
I've put all that customization energy into my Linux VM, i.e. my programming environment. Time spent dicking around there always teaches me something and results in a somewhat more efficient setup. Time spent playing with an Android shell or launcher or icon theme or whatever was just...sunk time.
To be fair on Syncthing, it's not nearly as difficult as that particular article made it out to be.
If you want to run the normal CLI-with-a-web-server Syncthing on Android, sure you could do that... but you could also much better serve your time by just having the Syncthing app with a native Android GUI with it. The day-project turns into a 5-minute project.
The FOSS movement has failed to appeal to end users, and a big part of that is the chronic inability of FOSS leaders to understand UX.
Us programmers want to believe that technology is enough. That just because because our implantation is technically superior in x, y and z metrics, consumers should be flocking to our solutions. But that’s not good enough. We have to get the technology right, and we have to make the product a joy to use.
As you said, there is a real disconnect between technical people and users. User-centered design tends to be treated with a kind of hostility. It’s often viewed as “dumbing down” rather than making the product better. I’m not sure why this disconnect exists, but until we close it, customers will continue to flock to closed ecosystem solutions.
My dad used an old laptop with Xubuntu on it for a while. Worked great for web browsing. I think a notebook computer with some flavor of Ubuntu preinstalled could stand in all right for a Chromebook; the challenge is how to penetrate a market that is pretty well-served already.
Well, it depends what you meant when you said "why they continue to be so successful.". If you compare iOS to Android, Android outsells it by vast numbers. If you compare macOS to Windows, Windows outsells it by vast numbers. How do they hold a niche by making nice products? Well they make nice high-end luxurious feeling products and that's surely enough.
If you take it more like "why do so many devs use macOS when they could have open source fully customisable Linux/BSD" which is in some ways their real "surprising" success given that they are more expensive and less customisable, the answer falls out in every HN thread about Apple - they build things which let people get on with their work. People get fed up of fighting suspend mode or wifi config or high-DPI displays or sound drivers or web video or breaking upgrades or regularly needing to edit config files to keep things basically working, and Apple makes all that go away. And that increasingly applies to Microsoft/Windows, people on HN often say things like "Win 10 ads in the start menu and telemetry is the last straw, I bought a Mac" or "I'm fed up of Windows update reboots interrupting me, I bought an M1 laptop", but they don't say nearly as much "I use macOS for the consistency of UI aesthetic". [Although people do say things like that about choosing iOS instead of Android]
Syncthing would compare to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, but it's the ecosystem and developer attitude towards users that I'm pointing to, not the file sync part. Apple walk the fine line between taking options away vs forcing you to deal with plumbing, easily well enough to keep their niche market share. "I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about." - including plenty of tech users who don't care.
The disconnect between the two worlds "people who use Apple products" and "people who think a day or so of your life is a reasonable amount of time to install an app that copies files over a network" is, well there's no way to cross that gap. And then you describe what Apple does as "dumbing down", for dumb people. People who don't want to care that SyncThing is written in Go instead of Java which means they can't access the Android API to write to an SD Card and the docs lead to a Github issue with 128 comments explaining why they aren't going to fix it. People who give their iCloud account login and Apple has their photos? Dumb people.
[I know people choose SyncThing to keep control locally and that often comes at a cost of more trouble, more effort. It's illustrative of very different worlds, that's all].