I switched from Android to iPhone last year, and this just isn’t true. There’s so many tiny issues with android apps that just don’t exist on iPhone, because the android apps have to work on all these different devices. You don’t even have to look for the kinds of apps you’re talking about because things like Safari and Apple Podcasts work really well. I know people have a lot of complaints, but things on the iPhone really do “just work”.

> Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in no way better. What else is there, where is the advantage?

This is incorrect. The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly.

Sure the best way would be for people not to use them, but if you "have" to, then it's better to use those on IOS.

> In which category are there better iOS apps?

Almost all of the prosumer apps on iOS offer a consistently better experience. This is maybe less relevant on phones than on tablets, but music production, video editing, digital painting and drafting, etc...

Camera apps.

Everything else I agree with, but the Android camera APIs do not allow developers to build good device independent camera apps the way they are available on iOS.

The iOS version of most social media apps is better. IOS simply has better API integration to it's hardware, where with android, many OEMs (hell this was even the case to a certain extent with older pixel phones), do a number of things that make the hardware not as easily accessible as quickly from the OS API for said feature.

This is especially relevant for the camera, but also various other sensors and hardware modules that exist inside these phones.

That said, in recent years there are just a number of other areas that android is much better at such as deeper AI integration, which goes back to even prior to the current LLM craze.

For one, I can actually use gesture controls without constantly triggering backswipes. Even something as droll and first party as Google Photos suffers this problem, where, say, cropping a photo and pulling too close from the screen edge will result in a backswipe detection instead.

Another example is Sonos, where the iOS app contains TruePlay to tune your speakers. They can do this because there is relatively few iPhone models (microphones). But this is a general, noticeable trend, where developers will add more / better / polished features to the iOS app.

The iOS YouTube app is not worse than the one in Android. Texting in iOS is arguably better or, at the very least, there is one more app to choose (Messages). And I’m curious to know what makes Antenna Pod so much better than the thousands of other podcast apps out there.

Social media apps have historically been worse in Android, because of lax app and privacy controls.

> What else is there, where is the advantage?

Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone.

iOS has less device models to target for. This makes it easier to support and deliver a more consistent experience, especially for gaming. I have also heard a few other points back in the day, but I am not sure how true they are now. One is that some social media apps might offer better quality in app camera experience. Another is that iOS userbase is more willing to spend money so devs are more likely to target iOS.

Foreflight is iOS only. There is nothing even a third as good on Android. I literally have a one app iPad just for this. Sigh.

This is a really ideology driven push. I don't think you really think the iOS browsers are worse, there's just less choice, because they all fundamentally use WebKit. Having to use Chromium is a worse experience, and not being able to use Gecko under Firefox is not a clear upgrade - particularly as WebKit is so tightly integrated with the hardware, leading to less battery use. If you really don't like WebKit for whatever reason, I get it. But that's not worse.

Whenever there is an app with full feature parity (WhatsApp) you assume at best it can be equal, based on nothing. You have specific apps that work for you, and that's great, but my practical experience is much different: whenever I haven't had a choice in an app (think banking apps, carrier apps, local library apps, the Covid apps) the experience has been much better on Apple. Whenever there is a choice in apps, they're often cross-written in something that allows easy porting, and very similar, or the native Apple solution is much smoother. It's rare that an app just feels better on Android, and usually limited to cases where a specific app is only available on Android or, you know, Google.

The YouTube app on iOS is superior to the Android app for one

> I assume worse

You know what they say about assuming.

sorry this is not correct. (do you consistently use both?) iOS apps are consistently better, because people prefer using swift

Honestly, you’re so wrong about the app situation that it’s almost staggering. iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished, have better integration with system features (like the Dynamic Island), and even often have more features. This isn’t even an unfounded opinion, it’s a material problem for Google and led them to vastly investing in automated testing and quality efforts

App addressable user base is another problem for Google, one that they have mentioned in developer conferences. It’s a big part of why they’ve been trying to ship a tablet and unify android and Chromebook. If Google isn’t careful they could find themselves in a downward spiral situation, stuck between apple on one side, and android forks on the other.

And the last answer is, as always, money

- browser is deemphasized on iOS, and so it’s weaker feature set matters less

- iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation

- on average iOS has significantly wealthier users who tend to be higher return or paying customers (seriously, look it up). This in turn leads companies to invest more heavily in iOS.

- easier integration due to a narrow system services ecosystem (no Google vs Samsung slapfights)

- unified platform advantage (apps written for iOS easily port to the watch and tablet, unlocking larger markets, and justifying greater spend in developing apps)

- apples review process is significantly stricter (for better or for worse)

Yes, Apple doesn’t have something like fdroid, and that’s really disappointing and honestly a legitimate dealbreaker for a lot of people

>I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps?

I researched iOS vs Android last year so some of my info may be out of date but this is what I collected.

Apple iOS exclusives (or earlier app versions because devs prioritized iOS):

  ChatGPT iOS app -2 months before Android
  Sora -2 months before 2025-11 Android
  Bluesky iOS app -2 months before Android (February 2023 iOS invitation-only beta; April 2023, it was released for Android)
  Blackmagic Design camera 2023-09-15  -9 months before Android  2024-06-24
  Halide camera app  https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/17klq40/what_are_some_good_examples_of_iphoneexclusive/k7efznt/
  Zoom F6  https://zoomcorp.com/en/us/software-product-page/software-sub-cat/F6-control-app/   https://apps.apple.com/us/app/f6-control/id1464118916
  Godox Light    https://www.diyphotography.net/godox-finally-launches-android-app-for-the-a1-but-only-for-some-phones/
  ForeFlight Mobile   https://support.foreflight.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004919307-Does-ForeFlight-Mobile-work-on-Android-devices  https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1883eya/the_authoritative_answer_to_why_isnt_foreflight/
  Adobe Fresco
  Procreate
  FlexRadio SmartSDR SSDR  2023-10-27T13:15:09+00:00  https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8029186/smartsdr-for-android-device

  TouchDRO for milling
  Kodi media player

  Amazon Fire Stick, car infotainment, music workstations, sewing machine GUI, geology soil tester, etc

I’ve been an iPhone owner for a while, but recently was required to get an Android phone to be a secondary work device. I got a Pixel 10 Pro—- brand-new, Google’s flagship device—- and within about a week there was a rattling noise from the camera module any time the phone moved.

The consensus online appears to be “oh, yeah, that’s the OIS module, you have to expect it, they all do that”. Well, iPhones also have OIS and they don’t do this.

Android might be “good enough” in hardware now but it’s definitely still behind.

> they think the audience is now fully captive.

It is, for the large sub-$800 segment of the smartphone market.

I can't remember a youtube change that did not degrade my experience on their platform.

> they think the audience is now fully captive.

the audience is captive. Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own). Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?

Google behave in ways that they think makes them more profit. When users cannot migrate (nor even threaten to), then it simply means they can do this.

Google's AI in their docs suite is so bafflingly bad. I wanted their AI to automate a sheet for me and it just choked. I switched to Claude for making a sheet that I ended up hosting in my local NAS using Microsoft Excel format.

> Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago

Google's customers are advertisers. They cater to that segment very well. They only need to attract users with "free" and cheap services so that advertisers think their campaigns are reaching enough eyeballs. Whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the end user has a good experience, is hardly relevant.

Sure, but uninformed consumers won't see it that way. Maybe in their circles it just sounds like a great idea and they thank Apple for implementing it.

Saying they were forced to implement USB-C is really overstating things. Apple loooved USB-C - so much so that their ill-fated butterfly switch laptops went all-in on it. They also helped design it. It's highly likely they were planning a move to USB-C anyway and the EU just pushed it forward a year.

The killer apps that gave Android an advantage on TV are now mostly available on tvOS. To me, these were VLC and RetroArch.

Apple was among the first to implement USB-C in early 2015. A whole year before Samsung and the likes.

Why not limit these restrictions to these specific locations? Surely there's already lots of location-specific and carrier-specific customizations like shutter sound in Japan, different radio frequencies and many more. It still sucks for those who live in these countries, but at least they know who to point their finger at.

>Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile).

This is just straight up false. Qualcomm's current top of the line processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind that.

iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires. Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software). It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.

This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent. They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.

Secure boot prohibits custom ROMs on most android devices

Well you misunderstand enshittification. It will never get better again. Both Google and Apple have enshittified their phones. You can verify this on the App Store, on the Play Store, both of which have now more than 50% of search result screen space dedicated to ads, more when it comes to scams [1]. AND you can verify this in the financial statements of Apple and Google, where you see what we've always seen in Google: steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from ads on the play store in Google's case, and steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from "Services", which is App Store ads.

In Apple's case this has been the only Apple business to grow at all in several of the recent years. In fact there's quite a few Apple businesses that look like they are "revenue neutral", most famously iPads. Google is better, but not by much. Cloud is growing fast ("but why?" is a question that's unanswered. I mean, "because of AI", of course, but ... seriously?)

So not only are they enshittified, and you see them getting worse and worse over time, but the financial statements show: if you're expecting this to get any better either in the Apple or Google case, you're insane. Because clearly ads for scams are worth it for advertisers, and most other types of ads are not worth it. The situation evolves more and more towards the cable channel situation of 20 years back.

You could also reverse the view. The simple question: "are people willing to compromise on hardware quality to get less ads?" has a very clear NO answer. "Are governments/institutions that are totally dependent on these systems willing to pay to either improve phones or make an alternative available?", again has boatloads of evidence that the answer is NO, in all caps.

[1] Search for "credit card" or "lose weight" and judge for yourself. Top results are promoting Apple or Google themselves, everything else are ads, and very bad deals that trivially will neither accomplish the promised financial independence nor weight loss. Or should I put it like this: the credit card deals advertised are so bad they might achieve weight loss. By the way ads designed to mislead, which the top ads for either search obviously are, are what both Google and Apple promised time and again never to do.

NewPipe (FOSS available on F-Droid) is nice alternative to ads-infested YouTube. I disabled YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my mobile, and I use NewPipe instead. You can even download YT videos or audio from YT videos using it.

If google push too hard, someone will make a "youtube mirror" - ie. a complete copy of youtube at a different domain.

The actual data could be hosted p2p across all the users devices, and any missing data retrieved one-time-only from real youtube servers.

> [Google's] strategy is growing markets, especially in india, and africa, and of course China.

Really? China? Where Google services are banned and Android phones come with local OS versions that cut them out? "High-friction sideloading" won't affect anyone in China. It won't be part of their experience at all.

The whole software world is shit now. The foundations were stable decades ago. Like Windows kernel, WinAPI, .NET, WPF, Linux kernel. But end user software is so terrible. Windows 11 with ads and unhelpful AI. macOS which is a bit less terrible, but still too bloated. Linux with its eternal changes between X, Wayland, Alsa, Pipewire, Pulseaudio, sysvinit, systemd, and endless choices. Both iOS and Android are terrible. iOS was perfect 10 years ago, it's absolute clownfest now. I would blame AI vibe coders, but it started before. I don't know who to blame. Why can't we just build solid minimal non-bloated OS that will last for decades without major rewrites. We've got so good foundations but so terrible end product.

Mobile providers usually offer loans ("service contracts") where people get phones outside their financial standing (I regularly see high end iPhones and foldable phones of €1-2k run by people in a country where average monthly salary is less than €1k): if a highly visible device like your phone can be had for 10% of your monthly salary, people will, unfortunately, opt for it.

I tend to not use Apple not due to cost (I honestly believe it's OK to pay a premium for quality; I might disagree they offer it today though, as I do use a couple of their devices at work), but because of how closed their ecosystem is (and yes, all my personal devices are running some sort of Linux, and Android phones are rooted and with bootloader unlocked).

This is one of Apple's marketing strategy.

Faux luxury.

Totally works in the US too on teens, moms, and lower middle class people.

I think an edit is in order, as your post, in the current form, doesn't make any sense.

How are they on par SoC-wise? Last time I checked, Qualcomm was still trying to catch up to Apple.

> they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.

What Google loses by pushing iOS AI customers to ChatGPT outweighs what they gain by trying to convince people to switch phones for access to Gemini.

> Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year?

You checked wrong. Google pays Apple on the order of $20 billion to be the default search on iOS - this is so significant it accounts for ~5% of Apple's annual revenue

  > Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.

> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.

This is true, but their phones don't ship with Google services out of box (at least the last time I checked). So in reality, "Google's Android" is really mostly Samsungs and Pixels.