(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
Mostly because it’s a cheap phone, but I also think it’s because Android is percieved as “uncool” by his peers.
Sometimes his old phone would glitch out occasionally and he’d say stuff like “This wouldn’t have happened if I had an iPhone!”
You can get a cheap android (but don’t have to). You can’t get a cheap iPhone.
And are you really going to get your 12 year old the latest flagship android when there are cheaper options?
If every android kid got the latest Pixel, I bet they wouldn’t be seen as “the cheap phone”.
Plus Apple’s been pushing nearly every anticompeitive angle they can. The iMessage thing is 100% intentional. It’s not that the android phones aren’t capable of working with iMessage. It’s that Apple wants to make your experience worse when something happens that doesn’t involve giving them money. Because they want you to push your friends into an iPhone, and people are dumb enough to fall for it.
I’m in my early 20’s and I just changed my iPhone for a Pixel, actually. Got fed up with a lot of the Apple crap, and the Pixel looked sick. Then again, I’m not American and I don’t use SMS anymore, so no one I talk to would ever know what OS I’m using.
The fact that Americans still use SMS is fucking bizarre. It’s like the Japanese still using fax in this day and age for some reason
I just dont want to see any ads on my phone. I can’t control a iPhone, but on android with f-droid I can see zero ads, newpipe, mull with ublock origin…
I’d even say that Apple targeted teens from the start, because we all remember when we were all kids how those little details mattered and how kids can be really horrible to each other about that. Them including a social differentiator inside a texting app is just evil.
Apple is the company who gave all the elementary schools free computers in exchange for putting their advertising posters up in.the hallways.
It was fully intentional.
Exactly. Apple knows what they have been doing for decades. When I was a kid I “needed” a Mac because of their advertising campaign in schools. My father bought us an Atari st barely used. It was almost twice as powerful as the Mac of the same time period and he paid a quarter the price. I remember my peers at the time saying “what’s that good for playing pong?” No it’s good for programming, databases, word processing, but also yes it’s good for playing pong.
Yeah it definitely sucks… a significant portion of your social status is tied significantly to what you have (via your parents)… Probably because at that age almost nobody has actually done anything yet
I didn’t realize how big of a deal iMessage was until I spoke to a few US iPhone users. They make such a big deal out of it. Completely surprised me.
iMessage is by far the biggest hurdle for Android to overcome in the US. Convincing your friends to use a third party app just so you can participate in a group chat is next to impossible
Which is weird. The following two requests are not equivalent:
You should spend 45 seconds downloading and activating a free app (I prefer Signal) so we can all have a nice group chat experience
You should buy a new $800 phone so we can all have a nice group chat experience
Looking at the kids I know, I think this is definitely one of the reasons they moved to iphones. A second line cheap android is basically a free phone, which is perfect for the first phone for emergencies and such as a kid. They break or lose it, it doesnt really matter. But the experience of having a crappy phone sticks with them and they want to move up to a “real” phone, which means “away from android”. Then all the kids get iphones about the time being in contact with friends is important, and suddenly imessage can tell you who is still using the “cheap phone”.
That’s why I will always chose Google because Google doesn’t do such things!
You dropped this:
/s
To a degree you can override Googles choices, including running your own private Android version.
With iOS you must take what Apple gives.
As I understand, to run a truly de-Googled Android you need to buy Google’s Pixel. I ain’t sending a single penny to an ad company.
Not really, there’s degoogled ROMs that run on different smartphones: CalyxOS, DivestOS, iodéOS, /e/… But it is generally recognised that the best one for privacy AND security is GrapheneOS, which indeed only runs on Pixel phones.
That’s very good to know. I’m gonna bookmark your comment and look into them before my next phone purchase.
Good idea. Take your time to look into them and decide what suits you better. Each of them has a different range of compatible devices. I might have also missed some other ROMs, so it’s worth reading more (although I deliberately skipped LineageOS because it is not fully degoogled).
I am personally running iodéOS for more than a year now and I’m quite happy with it.
Apple earns 4 billion a year from ads and growing.
Google is an ad company, and growing.
Then I recommend buying the Pinephone (or similar Linux phones). Everything else is immoral software controlled by Google or Apple.
I recently moved from Chrome to Firefox, so I get that. But Apple is a hell of a lot worse about it.
Using the iMessage thing to create social pressure in kids is pretty evil.
Luckily good ol’ Google never targeted kids with their ads.
Which Android does he have? I do see this happen a bunch, a kid will have a bottom of the barrel cheap Android phone (you don’t have cheap options of iphones) and hate Android, not the fact that it’s a budget $100 phone. Get him a note 23 ultra and he won’t have those issues. Then he can show off the spen features iphones will never have
Not sure exactly what model it is, but it’s definitely a Motorola phone.
Maybe if he had a Pixel he’d appreciate Android more.
I think a highish end Samsung phone is also a great experience.
I recently switched from Pixel -> Samsung -> iPhone. I think the iPhone might be the worst outside of battery life.
This another factor why kids lean to iphone. Their parents buy them the shitty $100 android phone from the carrier store. Compared to a $1000 iPhone, it sucks pretty bad.