I think some of it just that different people have different priorities. Some of what protected Apple was vanity. I think Steven Jobs cared about how people saw him and his products. He wanted to be the guy who made a premium product that he thought was cool and was proud of. The longer time went on, the less Apple execs cared about what he would have wanted and started caring more about what they wanted.

I also think that they're counting on people to have been conditioned to accept ads everywhere. Microsoft has been infesting their OS with ads for over a decade which, like it or not, has normalized that practice.

Apple is counting on the fact that iphone users aren't going to switch to android devices just because the company starts pushing ads in their face. In addition to all the customers who don't stop buying apple products because they are filled with ads, a percentage of them will start paying for more Apple products and services because of the ads. The obvious next step from here is to increase the amount of ads until that's no longer the case. Get used to seeing ads iphone users; it's only going to get worse.

I think it's not just Apple. Everyone and every company seem to become greedier and greedier. Economically, the world is not in a great place, apart from a minority which just gets richer and richer.

While I don't know, my suspicion is that the market is saturated, but the company is still hungry for "numbers go up".

"We have a large, loyal consumer base and can count on a steady return for many years," is no longer sufficient. So corporations cannabalize, turning long-term strengths into short term profits.

It's what we're doing to our entire civilization. Why should Apple do anything different?

No more Jobs being tastemaker at the helm. Cook is pure business.

> I think the more comparable thing would be youtube premium (paying to not have as many ads there), and I certainly pay for that.

This isn't comparable, because the base product is free. We're talking about paying an upfront fee for a premium product (like $2k for a phone) and then being shown ads. Youtube would be a vastly different product if everyone had to pay a one time $2k to use it (and then purchase premium to unlock ad-free). It's also noticeable that a lot of the "premium" media services go from being ad-free to ad-light... so we're back to cable... but that's a different discussion.

>I have no clue how popular it is though overall, presumably not super popular.

It's not very popular because you can remove ALL ads from youtube using a free browser extension

I think you have a wrong idea about GrapheneOS. You install the sandboxed Play Store/Services through their app store and then it's pretty much the same as any other Android phone. Except that it doesn't get in your face with preinstalled crap (Google, Apple, or Samsung). On the GrapheneOS forums there are a lot of non-technical people that install GrapheneOS and don't have many issues. The primary annoyance is Google's abuse of their monopoly with Play Integrity.

I would say it often feels more like a luxury product than an iPhone or Google-certified Android phone because it's not full of cheesy stuff. It's what iPhone and Pixel would look like if Apple/Google didn't want to push you: subscriptions, AI, movie/music apps, etc.

I don't think there's any defaults you need to change out of the box besides installing the apps you want.

But yeah, besides the stock Android which looks good, GrapheneOS does not add UI features themselves. When they add features like the recent secure clipboard, it fits nicely in the settings.

> I also don’t think there will be Motorola devices with GOS out of the box, they’re just meeting the requirements to be able install it.

"There's a high chance." https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117299954135808210

In other posts they've said they will be sold with GrapheneOS out of the box.

Both the UI and UX are rough compared to the polish of iOS.

Sorry, but no.

I also have an iPhone for $REASONS. Both my prior iPhone Air and my new iPhone 18 Pro still frequently stutters. Even scrolling some settings screens (which are very simple), I can often see frames getting dropped. Apple apps like the App Store are one huge frame-dropfest (even if you let it preload all assets). Apple can't get a nearly 1500 Euro phone with the fastest single-core performance and probably the fastest GPU to render normal window chrome smoothly anymore.

My P10P with GrapheneOS, which only has a midrange SoC by modern standards (don't believe what Google tells you) and it is buttery smooth.

iOS got even more terrible with Liquid Glass, so many things are badly readable, even with the slider set to completely opaque in iOS 27.

iOS used to be premium compared to Android. But Apple enshittified iOS over the last few years. Even most Apple pundits agree.

Since people seem to disagree because they simply cannot see it, here are two recordings at 0.5x speed so that even people who are not sensitive to stutters can see it:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/S24N1S17XG#56iNGffWKqZr

https://drive.proton.me/urls/DH527V6GRR#625BpPuAcYPb

iOS? "Polish"?

Even AOSP is head-and-shoulders better than iOS.

No android auto? What are you basing this on? I ask because I am responding from grapheneos while connected to android auto, and I am concerned I am in the wrong universe again.

There is Android Auto. There's contactless payments in Europe through Curve, Paypal, and some specific banks. Some companies are working on bringing them to the US.

Funny enough, the only part of Apple Pay I use with any frequency is the browser/app integration part, basically as a much more convenient alternative to PayPal sometimes.

IRL I do use it on occasion but everything I use it for, I could just fall back to the contactless chips in my physical plastic CCs - just like I did for all those years on a deGoogled Android phone with no Google Wallet support. The unique value add of Apple Pay in the physical world is nearly zero to me, other than acting as a market force that made US point of sale systems finally catch up to Canada years late and offer tap to pay.

> Just about everybody with money uses contactless payment

Cash is much better for privacy. The government, banking system, and countless intermediaries should not know how I spend my money.

So the lack of contactless payment on GrapheneOS may be inconvenient, but is it consistent with a privacy stance.

Soon enough they'll be asking you to pay for Storage Space Pro (lets you open the trunk) and Intelligent Manual Media Control (lets you slightly lower the volume of ads that automatically blast out of all the speakers when the car is on)