Why do some techy people think Android is a better OS than iOS?

[Cancer12]

My Droid X is long in the tooth, so I've been eagerly awaiting today's announcement. I'm jealous of my friend's iphone and will likely get the iphone 5, but today I noticed that the overwhelming theme of the messages from normal people on tech sites is that they consider Android to be the superior OS, while iOS has stagnated. My version of Android is old, and I liked it for awhile, but it has definitely slowed down over time.

I know this is the Apple forum, but why do some people consider Android to be superior? I have no experience with it and don't understant what would make one OS better than another.

 

[akshatp]

Because they want to be different.
Because they bought an Android phone and have buyers pride.
Because they are stupid.
Because they are haters.

Need more reasons?

 

[ViviTheMage]

fanboys, shrug....I think all 3 are good OS's, iOS, droid, and Windows ... I just prefer iOS and am invested in the app's. I also try to play with a new droid/windows phone every few months to keep up to date with them, but every time I am just happy to be back on my trust iOS interface. It's just so smooth.

My facebook was plastered with people bitching about how apple is 1-2 years behind, droid had this in 2.1, etc, etc...but the thing is, Apple isn't about being ahead of hte curve every single time...they're about polish...and my god do they polish products well.

 

[Red Storm]

Android offers more choice and puts more "power" in the hands of the user, and that includes its own host of pros and cons. Apple reigns it in more, so you could say the minimum quality level is higher, but the "ceiling" is also lower, and that has its own set of pros and cons. Whichever works better for you is the OS you will like more.

I personally can't do iOS because of an inability to tailor the interface to my liking, the lack of handset options (specifically large screens), and Apple being late to the game on certain features (namely LTE and built in navigation, both of which were finally taken care of).

 

[Oyeve]

Because they want to be different.
Because they bought an Android phone and have buyers pride.
Because they are stupid.
Because they are haters.

Need more reasons?

Yes, we are different, unlike you cookie-cutter cult-of-steve douchebags
Of course we have buyers pride, so do IOSers
We may not call ourselves "Geniuses" but we tend to be smarter
Yes, we hate you apple douchbags.

I kid of course.


But, joking aside, I think techs who say they hate ios are basically the same who say they hate windows. In other words UNIX guys. Me, I hate the apple as a company but own many apple products. While I use my sgs3 90% more than my iphone 4 I dont hate the iphone 4, I just have needs that the iphone cant do or cant do for free. I will use one of my upgrades to get the ip5 because the camera and real panoroma intrigue me.

 

[Ancalagon44]

What Red Storm said.

I refuse to buy Apple products because I disagree with their corporate mentality, if you want to call it that. But I admit that their products are great, and iOS no doubt is a great OS.

Some things Android was first on, like notifications, but in general, its likely that iOS is more polished. However, I would love to get my hands on a Jelly Bean device to compare it to iOS5/6. My Gingerbread O2X is long in the tooth!

 

[wirednuts]

cancer12- i think you might be surprised how fast your phone actually is with proper software. VXL 1.0 is an outstanding rom for that phone, and it will turn your stock DX into something you didnt think it would ever be.

http://rootzwiki.com/topic/23376-rom-vxl-10-vortex-liberated-out-of-beta/

if you have questions, just ask. if you havent rooted and installed roms before, make sure you read up on it first because doing it wrong can cause major headaches or ruin the phone.

but if you do it right (again, its not hard but you dont want to screw it up) you wont have to mess with it anymore and that phone is still a speedy little device. they still go for good money too- i just sold a like new one for $150 on ebay, no joke. people pay good money for rooted phones because they dont want to take on the risk of doing it themselves.

 

[akshatp]

Yes, we are different, unlike you cookie-cutter cult-of-steve douchebags
Of course we have buyers pride, so do IOSers
We may not call ourselves "Geniuses" but we tend to be smarter
Yes, we hate you apple douchbags.

I kid of course.


But, joking aside, I think techs who say they hate ios are basically the same who say they hate windows. In other words UNIX guys. Me, I hate the apple as a company but own many apple products. While I use my sgs3 90% more than my iphone 4 I dont hate the iphone 4, I just have needs that the iphone cant do or cant do for free. I will use one of my upgrades to get the ip5 because the camera and real panoroma intrigue me.

Well said. And for the record I wasnt saying iOS is better or worse than Android. I get equally irked by iOS users that say their phone/OS is better than ANdroid phones/OS.

 

[AMDZen]

fanboys, shrug....I think all 3 are good OS's, iOS, droid, and Windows ... I just prefer iOS and am invested in the app's. I also try to play with a new droid/windows phone every few months to keep up to date with them, but every time I am just happy to be back on my trust iOS interface. It's just so smooth.

My facebook was plastered with people bitching about how apple is 1-2 years behind, droid had this in 2.1, etc, etc...but the thing is, Apple isn't about being ahead of hte curve every single time...they're about polish...and my god do they polish products well.

Sorry but iOS and Android are both lightyears ahead of Microsoft and MS is way far away in regards to app support

 

[Cancer12]

wirednuts- I'll have to try that, but regardless if I brick it or not I'm still getting a new phone. The battery is beginning to resemble Lake Powell.

So Android is simply more customizable? I simply don't understand how people can say something like an OS is clearly better than another. I use Linux on my laptop, but use Windows for work. They each are better in some areas than others. I've never spent much time with Apple products.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I find iOS to have more and better apps than Android in general. It is nice however to have access to the many custom ROMs that iOS does not get access to. Sure it is possible to jailbreak iOS but flashing custom ROMs is not something I have heard of.

iOS tends to be faster and more optimized as Apple only has a few devices that it needs to program for and even the best custom Android ROMs are not nearly as fast as stock iOS software. By the time Apple discontinues software updates for devices they are too slow to run the new software anyway. It is not as big of a deal as on Android you will be stuck waiting for a software update that may never come even if the device is capable of running it.

 

[HeXen]

i find iOS has a better feel to it, in terms of recognition, scrolling physics..or however one wishes to describe it. Main issue for Android is similar to MS's, letting hardware vendors put it on whatever and however they see fit, which isn't always the best experience for consumers.

 

[Kenmitch]

Being an x iphone user it was the ability to choose the phone I wanted based on looks, screen size, and specs that did it for me. The ability to customize the phone to my liking was also a factor. Of course I wasn't deep into the Apple eco-system so I didn't have no real ties to IOS nor Apple.

OP what you need to do is get some hands on experience with modern cell phones before you make a buying decision.

 

[slugg]

I used to be a die hard iPhone fan. But... I'm honestly not impressed with the iPhone 5 or iOS 6 at all. I gave the Samsung Galaxy S a try and I was blown away; similar to how I was blown away by the iPhone 3G when it first came out. I see the iPhone 5 as a marginal improvement over iPhone 4S, which isn't that much better than a 4, if you ask me. Sure, the camera is better, the phone is faster, etc... but I just don't see any ground-breaking progress on the device.

Still, I'll reserve my final opinion until I use one. I plan on holding an iPhone 5, Nokia Lumia 920, and Galaxy S 3 (or whatever is newest by November/December) and messing with them individually until I make that decision. Who knows, the iOS polish may win me over, but I really do think that Android 4+ has finally nailed it. It does take some getting used to, but it's pretty damn good.

But as far as I can see, nothing really stands out to me about the iPhone 5. The "killer app" they're touting is the flyover maps with turn-by-turn directions... I really hate to sound like all the Android fanboys, but the current iteration of Android beats the pants off of Apple's implementation. Google Maps is just that much more superior. And it's been out for quite some time...

The other thing that's really starting to bother me is the shackles imposed by Apple across the entire device. I hate that I'm not "allowed" to do whatever I want with my device. It used to not bother me, but seeing my friends have phones that are way more useful than mine really makes me wonder about how much time I've wasted with my iPhone 4. The ability to add features to the phone is impossible with iOS, but with Android, it's no big deal. I'm just tired of missing really basic functionality and not having the ability to add it when needed, like downloading email attachments and sending them to someone else... or sending more than one image in an email... Or having different signatures for different email addresses... Or *easily* adding free ringtones... or many, many other minor things that add up to an annoying experience.

$.02

edit: oh and if any of you remember my posts about my experience with the Apple store in Tampa, there's that, too.

It's not likely that I'll buy another iPhone. I'm still not ruling it out, but Windows and Android look more and more tempting every day. I really want that Zune Pass...

 

[KentState]

There are a lot of reasons why this probably happens.

Techie people are very opinionated
Techie people like complexity
Apple never catered to the creative/artsy crowd while other companies catered to future IT college students, though it may have changed in the last 10 years.
Techie people buck the flow
iOS was the anti Blackberry/Windows Mobile and now the roles are reversed
Google in general had a techie following for being anti-everyone else (Google+ vs Facebook, Gmail vs Yahoo/MSN, Google Chat vs AIM/Yahoo, Docs vs Office, Voice vs phone companies)

 

[Nothinman]

The bullet point list of technical reasons is cool for some people, but for most it doesn't really matter. And a lot of them depend on your perspective. I would probably say that iOS won hands down pre-ICS. I've only used Froyo and Gingerbread before ICS but you could tell they were still pretty young in the development stages, little things that were taken for granted on other platforms just weren't there. But with ICS and especially JellyBean, iOS is now playing catch up in a number of areas and will never totally catch up because some of those features are things Apple doesn't want their users doing.

It's a more open ecosystem with all but Google's proprietary apps being open source so there's more choice in the OS you run and the app stores are pretty much neck and neck these days. You have infinitely more choice with regards to device hardware.

For developers there's the fact that one uses a custom Java VM so they get to use a language that's popular, very well known and used in a ton of other areas. While Apple makes you use Objective C which is neither well known nor popular outside of iOS. Learning Objective C gets you talent in one niche and nothing else.

And one of the biggest reasons: there's no dependence on the aberration that is iTunes.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I work in an Exchange environment that's BYO-Mobile, so I get brief hands-on experience with what normal people are willing to buy (as opposed to you latest-and-greatest, now-available-for-pre-order, upgrade-phone-every-three-months people.)

There are a lot of big-screened, shiny Android phones with monster tech specs and super-fast LTE connections out there. Root the phone and it's way more customizable too. Scrolling and app switching animations are plenty fast. Video and gaming performance are good. They work well. They're effective and efficient.

iOS is polished, smooth, slick, and intuitive to a degree that brings it so far beyond any Android implementation I've had the misfortune to use it's not even funny. It's a work of art.

 

[Nothinman]

I work in an Exchange environment that's BYO-Mobile, so I get brief hands-on experience with what normal people are willing to buy (as opposed to you latest-and-greatest, now-available-for-pre-order, upgrade-phone-every-three-months people.)

There are a lot of big-screened, shiny Android phones with monster tech specs and super-fast LTE connections out there. Root the phone and it's way more customizable too. Scrolling and app switching animations are plenty fast. Video and gaming performance are good. They work well. They're effective and efficient.

iOS is polished, smooth, slick, and intuitive to a degree that brings it so far beyond any Android implementation I've had the misfortune to use it's not even funny. It's a work of art.

I feel the exact opposite, iOS is completely unintuitive and ugly to me.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I feel the exact opposite, iOS is completely unintuitive and ugly to me.

And yet you use Debian. :hmm:

Your opinion. I lack regard for it.

 

[Nothinman]

And yet you use Debian. :hmm:

Your opinion. I lack regard for it.

I feel the same about yours.

 

[TuxDave]

There are a lot of reasons why this probably happens.

Techie people are very opinionated
Techie people like complexity
Apple never catered to the creative/artsy crowd while other companies catered to future IT college students, though it may have changed in the last 10 years.
Techie people buck the flow
iOS was the anti Blackberry/Windows Mobile and now the roles are reversed
Google in general had a techie following for being anti-everyone else (Google+ vs Facebook, Gmail vs Yahoo/MSN, Google Chat vs AIM/Yahoo, Docs vs Office, Voice vs phone companies)

That actually made me chuckle.
"Facebook and twitter is lame, it's for letting people know when they're taking a crap."
<years later>
"Google+. That's so cool. I'm signing up!"

- true story.

Edit: And yes there's bad apples (pun) in both camps.

 

[mugs]

I feel the exact opposite, iOS is completely unintuitive and ugly to me.

Which aspects are unintuitive?

 

[Nothinman]

Which aspects are unintuitive?

I don't have any specific examples handy because I've been lucky enough to only have had to touch them once or twice over the past couple of years, but it just doesn't do anything in the ways that I expect. I always have to stare at the screen for a few seconds before I figure out what I need to hit or even Google for the instructions. The same goes for OS X, it's just completely backwards from what I expect and want.

My favorite anecdote though is how one of our sales people was handed an iPad to use which wasn't preconfigured for him and when he turned it on and saw the icon indicating he needed to plug it into iTunes and couldn't figure out what to do with it. So for him, even step 1 was an non-intuitive fail.

 

[akshatp]

I don't have any specific examples handy because I've been lucky enough to only have had to touch them once or twice over the past couple of years, but it just doesn't do anything in the ways that I expect. I always have to stare at the screen for a few seconds before I figure out what I need to hit or even Google for the instructions. The same goes for OS X, it's just completely backwards from what I expect and want.

My favorite anecdote though is how one of our sales people was handed an iPad to use which wasn't preconfigured for him and when he turned it on and saw the icon indicating he needed to plug it into iTunes and couldn't figure out what to do with it. So for him, even step 1 was an non-intuitive fail.

Sounds like a real smart guy. You too, btw.

PS my 3 year old nephew figured out how to use an iPod touch to play music without being given any instructions. Make of it what you will.

 

[Nothinman]

Sounds like a real smart guy. You too, btw.

PS my 3 year old nephew figured out how to use an iPod touch to play music without being given any instructions. Make of it what you will.

Make all of the snarky remarks you want, but he manages speak well enough about EqualLogic SANs, Cisco Nexus switches, VMware environments, etc to sell them so I don't think he's doing too bad for someone in sales. And I can set them all up so I'm comfortable with what I know as well. But I've made a strong effort to stay as far away from Apple's ecosystem as possible, which is why it's so foreign to me.

My gf's 4yr old was playing Angry Birds in Chrome recently. But he didn't just will it to be so, he figured it out by watching others and a little bit of trial and error. My main point is that nothing is really intuitive, everything requires some effort to learn how to effectively use it.