Last week, Apple announced their latest products, which included the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, and since then there has been the usual news and social cycles of praise and doom, depending on your device preference. Apple fans mostly love the new devices and Android fans pan it. Now that we’re 10-years in, you’d think we would all be done with this rhetoric but clearly we’re not. I think this is stupid.
Arguing about why one platform is better than the other is immature and naïve. Unfortunately, there appears to be no end to the amount of discussion dedicated to it. Apple vs Android. Mac vs Windows. Ford vs Chevy. Republican vs Democrat, yada yada yada. It’s such a waste of time because the “argument” is that one person’s preferences are better than someone else’s and how can they be? Your preferences are based on your personal goals and objectives.
I really enjoy the Apple ecosystem so it makes sense that the iPhone would be a better fit for me. I use iTunes, Photos, Pages and as a result find there to be less “friction” to use an iPhone. It’s the best tool for me but it’s not the best tool for everyone.
My business partner, Dan, has never wanted to use Apple services and prefers to manage everything himself. He uses a few Google services but as a Linux user he prefers a much higher degree of control than the average person. He recently dropped AT&T and switched to Google Fi with the Pixel and it’s been a really good fit for him. His goals are different from mine and you can’t help but say, “of course” that he chose an Android device over an iOS device.
From this perspective it seems awfully silly to want to argue why Android is superior to iOS, or vice versa, right? In my mind, it’s akin to arguing that BLUE is the superior color to RED. We may prefer one over the other but it isn’t a zero-sum game where because I like one over another, your choice is inferior.
Time-and-time again, I see people getting into dogmatic arguments over issues and I have to shake my head and wonder how I can diffuse the situation? Android vs iOS, or Chevy vs Ford are rather silly to begin with but how different are they really from conservative vs liberal, republican vs democrat? It’s the same foundation just extended to a much deeper psychological level and thus becomes for visceral.
I certainly don’t have the answer and smarter people than me haven’t seem to have found one either. My theory though is that if we can ever find a strategy for de-railing the Android vs iOS argument, then we might have a solution to far more serious issues as well.
Until then, I have to finish downloading the latest version of iOS since it was released today and I’m such and Apple fanboi. 😉