(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 😔
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There’s a hidden cost to using a phone created by an advertising company to track you, not to sell hardware. I’d rather just pay more for the phone than be subjected to more targeting by the predatory capitalists and oligarchs ruining technology.
The idea that an iPhone is more secure or private is a farce you’ve been sold. It’s true that Google makes more money off of tracking behavior and selling ads but it’s absolutely laughable to believe Apple doesn’t do that also. They just focus their efforts more on entrapping you in an ecosystem where you don’t feel even able capable of giving another tech company money besides them. Need proof, look at the fact that lawmakers had to force them to use USBC. The excuse they gave for not doing it was flimsy af. They obviously were looking to keep profiting from their shitty lightning cables. Never once did the fact that it’s outlandishly inconvenient to need a different cable than your friends with Androids for charging your phone ever register as a factor for apple. Proprietary and overpriced. That’s the entire business model.
As someone with an android, and someone who worked in digital forensics, iPhones absolutely are more secure. It’s way harder to break into an iPhone.
I think part of what I’m reacting to is the “bragging to delivery” ratio. Google never brags about being the most secure OS, yet many people smarter than me point out ways it’s better than iOS.
The problem with that is you’re bunching so many phones together based on their OS when their security is dependent on more than that. I’ll admit I’m unaware of the current situation but Pixels for example have been more secure than the iPhone in the past and are still considered secure in general, no idea about how they compare to an iPhone.
Where I used to work, we had a massive digital library of android phones with confirmed exploits. They went up to quite recent phones and OS versions. The android team wasn’t particularly big because there wasn’t a major need for manpower to keep up. The iPhone team was highly specialized and had their work cut out for them. I wasn’t on either team (Windows and sort-of OS X) but I fell into their meetings and wikis quite often due to platform overlaps.
And the latest and greatest wasn’t necessarily what was getting attention anyway. Plenty of people worldwide use old phones
Hmm, I’ve also heard the opposite kind of – at least from an exploit patching perspective a lot of people claim Google fixes the security holes much quicker. But admittedly I’m sure you know a lot more about this than I. I’m relying on secondhand information
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Apple tracks iPhone users. Apple is an advertising company. Apple just tries to block other advertising companies from tracking you on their platform, because they want more money.
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Every now and then I see claims like yours popping up on Lemmy and Reddit. That Google is an advertising company and that you should not entrust your data with their phone or OS. Strangely, sometimes opinions like this gets highly upvoted, while some gets downvoted into oblivion.
(My opinion: Google certainly is an advertising company, but I prefer Android anyway.)
At least there’s a chance you can install a custom OS like Graphene or Lineage on a phone, if you choose correctly.
There isn’t the slightest chance anymore of making an Apple phone your own.
Jailbreaking is a thing no? it was last I checked. Which was years ago tbh
Pretty sure not. I ditched the iPhone when I couldn’t jailbreak it anymore and that was years ago.
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I think the most frustrating part is Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids and people aren’t like “Oh, fuck them for doing that”, they’re like “Oh, Android sucks.” Like it’s just a wildly successful and incredibly scummy tactic to convince people that Apple devices are superior and people didn’t just fall for it, they’re willfully diving in headfirst.
It’s a shame, really, because I do think they make some pretty good hardware. Might not be my thing, but they make a good phone. That said, I’ll never patronize them because of the bullshit I’ve had to endure trying to communicate with my iPhone-owning family.
i’ve only ever heard about this “green bubble” thing from USA media.
do Americans still use SMS?
why? phone numbers are obsolete. my SMS inbox going back years is just 2FA security codes, and they’re very rare these days, since authenticator apps.
Yeah sms ought to be the standard default. Since companies like apple refused to help improve it, people like you turn to other solutions. If you use WhatsApp, you should know Facebook owns it and uses it to spy on you for profit. I’d prefer “obsolete” sms to that…
RCS should be the default. SMS is the protocol designed for old non smart cellphones.
The exact problem is that Apple DOES default to SMS outside of imessage
You’re right… but isn’t RCS designed to be a superset of sms, with sms being a fallback for old clients on the other end? Really I meant “there should be a standard text protocol for all devices” which is what sms was originally, it just lacked all but the most basic of features.
I don’t like RCS entirely in its current form but I believe that (I could be very wrong but) SMS is planned to be phased out in the long term, how they plan to replace its reliability is beyond my understanding.
There are still no FOSS RCS implementations on either platform.
WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted.
Right but it’s also owned by Facebook so it’s doubtful they aren’t using all possible means to spy on you regardless of that fact
RCS is also encrypted fwiw
Also fwiw Google can still see what you write if you use their keyboard (or OS, but I can’t bet on that, and their software being able to see it doesn’t mean they record it, just that they can)
Just as Apple can too BTW.
Definitely. Not sure putting one’s trust in Google is much better though.
I mean, Google didn’t actively decide that facilitating genocide was worth the dollars it earned them 🤷
They tried to but employees stopped it (they staged a walkout or something IIRC)
Fair enough, Google is definitely the lesser of evil comparing them. But encrypted Meta versus non encrypted Google is not a no-brainer decision.
Still popular in Australia, at least in my demographic
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They will have to open up in 2024. Thanks to the EU.
Yes! I’ve been saying this for many years, but my Apple cult-member friends don’t want to believe me. It’s gotten better over the years, but Apple used to be so incompatible with everything else, almost like it was done on purpose to force more market share…🤔
Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids
In what way exactly? All the messaging apps I use work fine. I even have the same Signal account logged in through both my Android phone and my iPad.
Nobody I know actually uses iMessage either. It’s a complete non-issue as SMS is quite an outdated technology.
USA still uses SMS for a variety of reasons.
Come back to me after convincing a group of non tech-savvy iPhone-using friends or family to use literally anything but whatever the default messaging app is available on their phone or whatever they’re already used to.
My grandma uses WhatsApp. The only reason I’ve ever used SMS is to receive a verification code
Teenagers are well known for their experience and insight
My entire life I’ve been reading news that only iPhones are cool, yet my social circles don’t care and have never said anything like this. I feel like this is a ‘Hello fellow kids’ type of investigative journalism, that is a secret apple ad.
Who the fuck calls Android devices “'Droids” unironically? This couldn’t have been real teenagers. Not ones from the past decade at the very least.
What you are referring to as droids is in fact Android/Linux, or as I’ve recently started calling it, Android+Linux.
…Good one! :)
Apple has a great advertisement department. They are great at pumping such news stories.
I have, in my dating life, gotten lightening charging cables to have around the house.
It’s never fun to have someone ask you for a charger, you saying “Sure, use the fast charger right there”, and not have the lightening cable for their phone. But it’s also a catch-22, if you DO have the cable they need then its “Why do you have this cable, you don’t have a iphone”.
“Why do you have this cable, you don’t have a iphone”
It’s like having some spare toothbrushes and women’s hygiene stuff just in case someone stays over. You’ll score points for being thoughtful, but on the other hand they’ll be like: waaait a minute …
Top iphone tip, heh -
When guests leave little reminders around the house, keep them in labeled zip loc bags, not in a general lost and found bin.
Far less awkward when they ask where their stuff is and you pull out a huge box of jewelry and clothing - “Can you describe your earrings for me?” - never goes down well.
Yeah, much better to go: “What’s your name again? Ah Jessica, let’s see… Jade, Jane, Jasmine… ah right Jessica, here’s your stuff!”
I mentioned it in another comment, but this was real in my experience. At least in highschool. It’s not like I was bullied or anything, but I was teased about it quite a bit and honestly it made me want to switch to iPhone just to fit in.
Holy fuck, kids are cringe. I hate this blue bubble elitism so much. Glad it’s not a really a thing in Europe.
I’m 14 and I hate iphones I prefer Android phones rooted with a custom rom
By the time you’re 20 you’ll be using Arch Linux and self-hosting everything!
I kinda already do I use arch and selfhost many things not everything but still
This is the way to go, kid
We’ll be watching your career with great interest
This one here is promising!
I’m 2 and I use a smartphone that only executes Fortran through punch cards.
I’m fifteen months old and my phone only runs a morse-code JIT compiler. The virtual keyboard has exactly one key
Nice, the world will try to conform you but never give in! You choose what you want to do.
Yeah… alot of people will. In my case my school IT department said I couldn’t use Linux… I got BSD. They then said that I needed Windows or Mac. They gave up after I got Windows 98 to work on my laptop (it’s xfce but they didn’t know the difference).
I’m just gotten to used to Motorolas twist to activate camera and now that I live in the city and durability isn’t as much of a concern I’m thinking of getting a foldable
I’m amazed it’s 2023 and we’ve still not universally adopted a protocol better than SMS. Thanks Apple
We have all universally adopted Rich Communication Services, which is an open standard.
Well, except for Apple. They haven’t adopted it.
Apple’s refusal to cooperate is both obviously profit motivated and infuriating. They’ve engineered this social gulf between iPhone and non-iPhone users. I often wonder about the collective social harm.
The low res photos and video are natural byproducts of squeezing modern media into an SMS message, but the ‘green’ bubbles take it to another level. The worst part is that the average iPhone user at best is apathetic. Meanwhile Cook suggested last year that we should just buy more iPhones as a solution.
yup. buy apple products, it’s the classism of our age to look down on poors who can’t afford the apple logo.
such actual garbage.
Mofo thinks we’re made out of money.
Crossing my fingers that the eu æaq that forces 3rd party app stores etc, on iphones, can fix it
Me too. I’m glad the EU is out there thinking about these things.
In 2024 Apple and Google will have to figure it out because the EU are twisting their arms.
It’s 2023. Why use SMS in the first place? The world except the US has moved on years ago.
Because open standards that don’t require specialized software have many advantages… Why would you prefer proprietary software in the first place?
Because it provides a better experience, weather it’s WhatsApp telegram, Signal threema or even discord or teams, they all provide a significant feature advantage over SMS. This starts with properly handling multimedia, not giving your number up to everyone else, proper groups, your messages living in the cloud for proper multi device functionality, your messages living unencrypted only on your device… There is plenty of real advantages with their associated side effects.
SMS as a standard is simply too old for modern expectations, this doesn’t make modern expectations stupid just because the standard is not being kept up to date. I have not written a single SMS since 2013 or so, and my life is better for it. Also there is definitely open third party chat apps that provide an open standard that can just be installed as one of a few apps, the problem here is that potentially no one is using them.
The main advantage of a computer in your pocket against earlier phones is that you can fundamentally install any software you want, not just what the device manufacturer deems acceptable, so why would anyone not take advantage of this for messaging is beyond me.
You just listed mostly things that already exist with sms or should exist as a standard and some of them, Google has tried with RCS but companies like apple actively refuses adoption. Yeah, you can install apps but ideally you’d not be required to, it would be a choice. Sending a text message ought to be a standard process. This is a lot of hate for the idea of standards dude.
The thing is it’s a specific standard that just hasn’t kept up, you shouldn’t be married to any software, and you should be able to decide yourself what you use, I can’t change what big tech does with their software, but I can call people stupid for not using the ability of their computers to run custom software.
I despise the trend of people not realizing what they legitimately can do with their hardware, because they were just too scared to install software. I so often stumble upon people who can’t accomplish simple tasks because they are terrified of installing software, and this messaging thing is definitely one of these issues.
Essentially if you are given a library of software, and you have a problem that is solved by installing software, why would you not install software, it’s mostly free, and requires only the briefest thought about what you want and where you can find it.
You’re entirely missing the point. Communication systems ought to be standardized and mostly has been. You’re acting like you can magically install apps on your relatives and friends phones if you want to.
I have zero fear of installing incredibly custom software and honestly do so most days…
Not sure how someone this intelligent can so easily get lost on the idea that communication happens on a network, not on one device, and therefore standards help interoperability… It’s sort of bizarre
Yes I can’t do shit about communication systems not being standardized to the degree I’d like and with the features I’d want.
So what I try to do is try to bully people until they use an app that everyone can be relatively happy with, SMS is essentially the only one I don’t accept because it’s 20 years old and doesn’t behave sensibly for the modern area.
I can understand that standards help interoperability but realize that for SMS, obviously that has failed because apple has rejected RCS for now and developed a default experience that is better. I don’t control any of that shit. I can just tell people to install chat apps if they want to talk to me. And I can bully them if they don’t.
The network is a network of communicating software so the standard can be installed by default or after the fact, it doesn’t make a difference if everyone would just install software. Being angry at apple or WhatsApp or whatever for not writing a messenger you like is sorta stupid, they are companies they’ll never do what you want, being a angry at users that refuse to use options freely available to them can at least improve the situation for me because they can install what I, or they want to use.
SMS > Facebook
And there are many more options better than both
Yeah but typically when people come into these threads going “huhuhu stupid Americans with their SMS” it turns out they’re on WhatsApp, like much of the rest of the world. Which is just hilariously stupid.
Don’t be ignorant. There are a lot more options, safer, open and with more features than sms/iMessage.
I’m in the US and my thought is that it’s easier to use sms because not everyone uses Signal, not everyone uses Telegram, and those types. If they did… One person would prefer Snapchat, the other would prefer Signal… Too many choices. With SMS, it’s just your phone number, and everyone has a phone number.
Otherwise you gotta get usernames for different people for different apps… It’s too complicated.
It’s not username based, it’s based on your phone number. I really don’t get what’s holding people in the US back to move on. Because these arguments don’t apply at all.
I think Snapchat is more a social media app than a messenger by the way.
I only text like 5 people. I’m not downloading an app to talk to 5 people.
This has to be a US thing, in Switzerland there is not a single person I communicate with using iMessage. It’s WhatsApp or Signal.
It is a US thing. It sucks.
Indeed a US thing, Brazilian here
And a little telegram.
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That’s because your mobile plans are usually different and you get charged for each SMS, while SMS is typically included for free in mobile plans in the US. Since you have to pay per SMS, people instead use WhatsApp and Signal which don’t have a per message charge.
That’s a thing of the past. Nowadays, in Switzerland you get everything unlimited for 20 a month.
In the past, messages cost 10 cents on a prepaid plan, so people started using WhatsApp for free messages at some point, and it just kind of… Stayed
You still think people get charged for sms?
America really is behind
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They’ll also say they’re too smart to be affected by advertising.
This news just in: teenagers can be arseholes to each other.
Back in my day, it was over the brand of sneakers or jeans that you wore.
My little brother refused to wear his new air walks to school any more because the kids told him they weren’t real because the style he had used a lowercase a logo. Same energy.
Back in the mid 90’s, Nike had the Air Modify Force / Air Adjust Force (can’t remember which they were at the time) and the shoes came with a changeable strap with the Nike logo and came in a bunch of colors. You could buy just the strap and change one of the accent colors of your shoes, basically.
Poor dude in middle school got busted for putting that strap over off-brand shoes and they dragged him the rest of the year over that shit.
At least sneakers doesn’t have a bunch of sensors, Internet connection and propietary software loaded, so by going with trend you won’t compromise anything other than money.
…yet
*Why American Teen Hate Android Phones
Also I’m very glad how Lemmy is a lot less US defaultism than Reddit is. It’s pretty tiring having to constantly hear about Democrats vs Republicans, or green bubbles, or Nissan cars bad, you get the point.
Not an American and couldn’t care less about the scene there lmao the rest of the world uses Android
Is this US specific? Because plenty of people (kids included) use Android in our country. Samsung is the most popular I think.
It is very US specific. There are other countries where ios have a majority market share, but in most countries the majority market share is android.
A bit like that here in UK. My job includes asking up to 150 people per day to switch off their phones. They are all late teens to middle aged. Majority are teens/early twenties. iPhones are by far the majority for younger British people. Others tend to be Samsung, Oppo or One+.
I think its a fashion statement thing, and don’t forget the teens probably have their bill paid by their parents.
Found the answer:
But the stigma regarding Android phones is mostly an American phenomenon, at least to the degree to which it affects purchase habits. Worldwide, per the same Statcounter report, Androids represent the significant majority of all smartphones, holding a 71% share of sales compared with Apple’s 28%.
I’m in the US with an Android and have never actually encountered this, only heard about kids bitching about it. Adults definitely don’t give a shit. It’s very childish behavior.
I believe the United States are Apple’s biggest market.
Yep, iPhones are not a big thing outside the US in my experience. They did not even cross 20℅ market share global until a couple years ago.
yeah this must be very american specific. most people here cant afford iphones and dont care enough over a stupid color. theres a lot of people who also swear by some android brands like samsung.
In Colombia a few years ago Xiaomi was every where. People getting an iPhone most like get a “are you paying 3 times to do the same as this other phone? You crazy” from their friends, at least I’m my social circle.
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Must be nice having a generation of entitled brats
Those teenagers are the victim of a failing educational system because they’re clearly idiots.
@favrion @AlmightySnoo it’s scary how unstable, impulsive, crazy, persuasive they are. I see many jobs getting destroyed after our generation. I can literally not think of how a genz is gonna be like a data analyst. I would like to see many outliers tho.
That’s funny. We said the same about you… Every gen shits on the next one. Every next gen figures it out.
A lot of millennials are struggling though. Only a few figured it out. It could be even worse for GenZ.
As a professor, I am terrified of what will happen when GenZ takes the reins. Without changing course content, GenZ has been failing what millennials passed without issue.
Millenials are struggling because the previous generations fucked everything up, not because they can’t figure things out.
@ExtraMedicated @canihasaccount we can’t blame them fully. Who would’ve thought carl segan would be right when he used to say that temperature will rise or When some used to say capitalism needs a check and balance.
This is just old people perspective. Every generation has been smarter than the previous since at least WWII. Every generation also seems pretty dumb at 19 years old.
Our schools have improved by leaps and bounds and get better all the time.
Our? Where? In the US? Certainly not in the US. By any measure. Math scores are the lowest they’ve been in decades, same with science. Nevermind all of the fascist 1984 book banning and burning nonsense happening in certain places. These kids are not smarter.
Passing/failing the same educational curriculum is about as close as you can get to objectively measuring “smart”, and a professor just told you they are seeing gen z fail. Not sure why that’s so easy to scoff at.
Curious in which ways specifically you think that millennials are struggling.
Probably financially, this of course isn’t something the millennials caused or can even correct on their own.
The good news is GenZ seems to direct their stupidity towards good things, mostly. They’re not racist or sexist or greedy etc. They try to help and improve the world. They effect change through sheer firepower.
The bad news is that stupid people are easily manipulated, and as soon as the boomers die off, zoomers will be the next target.
@jhulten yeah I’m not completely against how they are and i understand that them being like this might be helpful too in the future tech and/or advancement of human civilization. While i still think it’s quite sloppy right now. And yeah we might’ve been more disastrous then the last gen.
As much as i agree that if i were in last gen, I wouldn’t want to miss and not see how much development we’ve seen in my time, I actually fancy your gen and society of that time. It’s just FOMO, innit?
There are still smart kids out there. They are probably not wrapped up in this Android/iPhone war.
Be careful not to group people together based on one criteria and judge them based on another.
@waz no it was just a critical comment and i didn’t even see the initial comment so ofcourse i was generalising.
Honestly fuck that “blue bubble” entitlement.
