Size-wise the iPhone XS is much smaller than the Pixel 6. When I travel for work, I chuck my work phone in the backpack, and my personal phone goes in the pocket. Both fit in the pocket should I want to, but the Pixel 6 just feels really cumbersome.
The iPhone is still a bit too large to comfortably reach the top of the screen without stretching though, but that’s solved with software. If I swipe down on the bar at the bottom of the screen, the entire screen kind of “scrolls down” allowing me to easily reach whatever is at the top of the screen without stretching, using multiple hands, or holding the phone awkwardly.
iOS is full of small but nifty features like that. Like being able to use the touch keyboard as a sort of trackpad to navigate with the text cursor. You can press and hold on subjects in photos to extract them. If you tap the status bar when scrolled down in a page, it scrolls to the top.
Most of all though, it’s very unintrusive. I loved my OnePlus One, but towards the end of its lifetime I was struggling with it a lot. OS updates stopped years before I stopped using it, so I had to manually flash stuff, that was a hassle. Enabling NFC payments after that was a pain. Every so often apps crash or become unresponsive, and the OS slows down after a while.
Even my Pixel that I really only use as a wifi tether, app development, and as an authenticator for work isn’t that snappy. If I’ve been in an app for a while getting back to the homescreen has a slight delay, the gestures throughout the OS are basically the same, but they just feel a bit off, the fingerprint reader doesn’t work reliably all of the time.
These are issues I just don’t have with my iPhone. It’s crashed once in the three years I’ve had it, not counting the testflight (beta) apps I’ve had. Everything feels really polished too. The design language is mature, the apps all look and run great, there are no delays when swiping or clicking inputs, gestures don’t have weird “lock on” points. There’s a lot of really subtle things that Apple does right, like the haptics, that just don’t feel or work as well on my Pixel. The widgets are fantastic too, and customisation has gotten better over the years as well. I love the lock screens.
When I first bought my iPhone I wasn’t entirely sold. I really missed the ability to have two apps on the screen at once, and I honestly still miss that. I don’t really miss anything else though.
That said, I have my Pixel because there are things it can do that my iPhone can’t. I’d need to buy a Mac if I want to setup development on it, and that just feels like a hassle. I’ve also been hoping for better dictation and such to arrive soon, since the Pixel has really stellar dictation features. I also think I’d make use of the voice recorder app more if it had the ability to transcribe what I say to text, though even there Android falls a bit short since I’m a polyglot, and it only supports a singular language at a time, and not even my native tongue.
I guess in short, my phone just doesn’t get in the way. There’s nothing about it that ever bothers me, and most of the time I don’t even think about it when I use it. It does what I need it to, when I need it, and it’s never failed me in that aspect in the three years I’ve had it.
Regarding the reasons why you like your iPhone, I can guarantee you would love macOS.
Strangely enough to me, the thing that clicks the most for switchers is the ability to send text messages from the Mac, but the one that clicked for me back in 2007 when I was still an Apple hater was Preview. Select any file and hit the spacebar and you’ll get a window displaying its content instantly.
Another thing was the real plug and play. Not a single fucking driver to install, everything just works. For instance, I bought an external sound unit to plug my guitar to my PC in 1998. Two years later the company goes out of business and my hardware misses compatibility with Windows 2000, so it’s s basically bricked. When I installed OSX Leopard on my Dell PC in 2007 I plugged it and it worked seamlessly (Real Time Audio kernel is craaaaaazy stuff too on Apple gear if you are a musician)
And there are tons of fine-tuned features like this.
Anyway, I couldn’t recommend you more to test macOS.
Oh absolutely. I used Tiger through to Mountain Lion on my old MacBook. No idea what versions I had at my old job. I’m familiar with Mac and definitely enjoy it, been thinking about getting an M2 Mac Mini for personal use. It’s funny you mention preview because I remember being blown away by that around the same time you were. I also recall how nicely integrated drag-and-drop was in everything, and how it was contextual based on what you were dragging and where, in a way that just makes sense. Even today Windows’ ability to do drag-and-drop stuff pales in comparison to even OS 10.5
Since I got my iPhone I’ve gotten more invested in the Apple ecosystem, and it’s easy to tell why people go for it; it just works. My bluetooth headphones broke, and so I got a pair of AirPods Pro. Loved them. Then I got annoyed with my Android/Google TV dongle, so I swapped it for an Apple TV, which was just as brilliant.
Sure, Android/Google has that Casting and whatnot, but it doesn’t work nearly as smoothly as Apple’s implementation does. If I’m sitting in the sofa and I put my airpods in my ear, the TV asks if I want to listen through them instead. If my roomie does the same, who is wall-to-wall with the living room, he doesn’t get the prompt. Google TV never asked such a thing, not even sure it’s a feature. Since my roomie goes to bed really early, Apple TV’s ability to let me watch stuff and listen in surround sound on my earbuds is fantastic.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that the entire Apple TV experience is smooth, pretty much instant, and lag-free. My Google TV had a tendency to sit and wait for a few seconds when you opened an app.
All the polish, the little animations and whatnot really do add to the experience. A while back I got a high-refresh rate monitor for my personal computer, and I realised that Windows animations aren’t actually laggy/jittery, they just appear that way because they aren’t interpolated. Apple interpolates the animations on OSX, so even on low refresh-rate monitors the animations look smooth.
It’s crazy how the small things make the whole thing with Apple stuff.
My company recently switched from a 90% PC to a full Mac equipment (about 100 people) and it kind of annoys me that most of people still want a mouse, and rage because “it’s not like Windows see?”
Fuck, I cannot see the point of switching without a proper training.
But hey, Macs are just overpriced PC without viruses and stuff right? Why can’t I run my cracked Photoshop.exe on Mac then huh? Why everything looks like my very open source not at all copy pasted OS but better because you know I love to spend hours tweaking my GUI?
Say more about what you like about it at much!
Absolutely.
Size-wise the iPhone XS is much smaller than the Pixel 6. When I travel for work, I chuck my work phone in the backpack, and my personal phone goes in the pocket. Both fit in the pocket should I want to, but the Pixel 6 just feels really cumbersome. The iPhone is still a bit too large to comfortably reach the top of the screen without stretching though, but that’s solved with software. If I swipe down on the bar at the bottom of the screen, the entire screen kind of “scrolls down” allowing me to easily reach whatever is at the top of the screen without stretching, using multiple hands, or holding the phone awkwardly.
iOS is full of small but nifty features like that. Like being able to use the touch keyboard as a sort of trackpad to navigate with the text cursor. You can press and hold on subjects in photos to extract them. If you tap the status bar when scrolled down in a page, it scrolls to the top.
Most of all though, it’s very unintrusive. I loved my OnePlus One, but towards the end of its lifetime I was struggling with it a lot. OS updates stopped years before I stopped using it, so I had to manually flash stuff, that was a hassle. Enabling NFC payments after that was a pain. Every so often apps crash or become unresponsive, and the OS slows down after a while.
Even my Pixel that I really only use as a wifi tether, app development, and as an authenticator for work isn’t that snappy. If I’ve been in an app for a while getting back to the homescreen has a slight delay, the gestures throughout the OS are basically the same, but they just feel a bit off, the fingerprint reader doesn’t work reliably all of the time.
These are issues I just don’t have with my iPhone. It’s crashed once in the three years I’ve had it, not counting the testflight (beta) apps I’ve had. Everything feels really polished too. The design language is mature, the apps all look and run great, there are no delays when swiping or clicking inputs, gestures don’t have weird “lock on” points. There’s a lot of really subtle things that Apple does right, like the haptics, that just don’t feel or work as well on my Pixel. The widgets are fantastic too, and customisation has gotten better over the years as well. I love the lock screens.
When I first bought my iPhone I wasn’t entirely sold. I really missed the ability to have two apps on the screen at once, and I honestly still miss that. I don’t really miss anything else though.
That said, I have my Pixel because there are things it can do that my iPhone can’t. I’d need to buy a Mac if I want to setup development on it, and that just feels like a hassle. I’ve also been hoping for better dictation and such to arrive soon, since the Pixel has really stellar dictation features. I also think I’d make use of the voice recorder app more if it had the ability to transcribe what I say to text, though even there Android falls a bit short since I’m a polyglot, and it only supports a singular language at a time, and not even my native tongue.
I guess in short, my phone just doesn’t get in the way. There’s nothing about it that ever bothers me, and most of the time I don’t even think about it when I use it. It does what I need it to, when I need it, and it’s never failed me in that aspect in the three years I’ve had it.
That’s a fantastic breakdown! I appreciate you taking the time to write this out.
The voice transcription worries me. I use it all the time to take notes while listing to audio books on the road.
To be fair this particular feature is in both Google Keyboard and Samsung Keyboard, and I imagine others too.
Regarding the reasons why you like your iPhone, I can guarantee you would love macOS.
Strangely enough to me, the thing that clicks the most for switchers is the ability to send text messages from the Mac, but the one that clicked for me back in 2007 when I was still an Apple hater was Preview. Select any file and hit the spacebar and you’ll get a window displaying its content instantly.
Another thing was the real plug and play. Not a single fucking driver to install, everything just works. For instance, I bought an external sound unit to plug my guitar to my PC in 1998. Two years later the company goes out of business and my hardware misses compatibility with Windows 2000, so it’s s basically bricked. When I installed OSX Leopard on my Dell PC in 2007 I plugged it and it worked seamlessly (Real Time Audio kernel is craaaaaazy stuff too on Apple gear if you are a musician)
And there are tons of fine-tuned features like this.
Anyway, I couldn’t recommend you more to test macOS.
Oh absolutely. I used Tiger through to Mountain Lion on my old MacBook. No idea what versions I had at my old job. I’m familiar with Mac and definitely enjoy it, been thinking about getting an M2 Mac Mini for personal use. It’s funny you mention preview because I remember being blown away by that around the same time you were. I also recall how nicely integrated drag-and-drop was in everything, and how it was contextual based on what you were dragging and where, in a way that just makes sense. Even today Windows’ ability to do drag-and-drop stuff pales in comparison to even OS 10.5
Since I got my iPhone I’ve gotten more invested in the Apple ecosystem, and it’s easy to tell why people go for it; it just works. My bluetooth headphones broke, and so I got a pair of AirPods Pro. Loved them. Then I got annoyed with my Android/Google TV dongle, so I swapped it for an Apple TV, which was just as brilliant.
Sure, Android/Google has that Casting and whatnot, but it doesn’t work nearly as smoothly as Apple’s implementation does. If I’m sitting in the sofa and I put my airpods in my ear, the TV asks if I want to listen through them instead. If my roomie does the same, who is wall-to-wall with the living room, he doesn’t get the prompt. Google TV never asked such a thing, not even sure it’s a feature. Since my roomie goes to bed really early, Apple TV’s ability to let me watch stuff and listen in surround sound on my earbuds is fantastic.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that the entire Apple TV experience is smooth, pretty much instant, and lag-free. My Google TV had a tendency to sit and wait for a few seconds when you opened an app.
All the polish, the little animations and whatnot really do add to the experience. A while back I got a high-refresh rate monitor for my personal computer, and I realised that Windows animations aren’t actually laggy/jittery, they just appear that way because they aren’t interpolated. Apple interpolates the animations on OSX, so even on low refresh-rate monitors the animations look smooth.
It’s crazy how the small things make the whole thing with Apple stuff.
My company recently switched from a 90% PC to a full Mac equipment (about 100 people) and it kind of annoys me that most of people still want a mouse, and rage because “it’s not like Windows see?”
Fuck, I cannot see the point of switching without a proper training.
But hey, Macs are just overpriced PC without viruses and stuff right? Why can’t I run my cracked Photoshop.exe on Mac then huh? Why everything looks like my very open source not at all copy pasted OS but better because you know I love to spend hours tweaking my GUI?
Anyway, you know.