It all goes back to the last quarter of 2016, where I broke my first ever Sony smartphone, Xperia T2 Ultra, and desperately searching for the replacement. At the time, I was somewhat clueless about technology, especially smartphone, and starting to do my own research about those things. I didn't hold a phone for about a week until finally I decided to buy Asus Zenfone 3 Max. I chose the phone because I'm always a fan of stock Android and Zenfone 3 Max suited the criteria (which what Sony also do great even until now). After using it a year more or less, I'm getting more aware about chipsets, learnt about it, and started to realize MediaTek chipset was a mess.
I eventually bought Motorola Moto G5S Plus and immediately fell in love with it. The UI, the features, escaped from MediaTek and switched to Snapdragon which was the thing drove me more into technology, all of it. I held into Moto G5S almost 4 years, which now fell into my dad's hands, and I had a new crush, a BIG ONE, that was OnePlus. I'm getting more and more aware of the smartphone world and how it works and starting to look into this particular phone, the legendary-boxy-jam packed iPhone 4 series from Apple.
I'm starting to do my research about Android and iOS, particularly Apple, and until now the company keeps screaming what the fucks in my ears. The high prices, the marketing scheme, the ecosystem which also known by 'the wall', and the so-called innovations. Don't get me wrong, I love the products. I love iPhone, Macbook, I'm even a big fan of iPads which until today still the best tablet you can buy. Apple Bionic chipsets also still beat the hell out of other chipsets until now. Here is where the BUTS came in.
First of all, the removal of headphone jack in iPhone 7 (2016). It blew my mind and even all the tech world were infuriated on that front and in Apple fashion, just in case you didn't know, they did it for the waterproofing to work more effectively and correct me if I'm wrong, because they needed more space for the components inside. Well, as always, Android phones also started to do this until someday figured out to put in the headphone jack back while still maintaining a big battery also IP rating for water and dust resistance.
Apple also known to put 'new' features in their products long after they were exist in Android phones such as 5G, higher refresh rate (granted, they were taken from iPad), and the biggest LOL I had were about widgets and App Library. What I very appreciated though, that they have to wait and perfected the features before finally being released in their products. While on the other hand, Android phones are all about innovation and coming from the science world, I'm a sucker for innovation.
Speaking of innovation, here is my take about Apple and Android OEMs. Android phones are always up for the task in experimentation while Apple is all about consistency and that is a plus in my book. Apple products are boring, but they just simply work, while Android products often sometimes rely on the developers for their features to work, which bring us back to that open source project vs the damned Apple ecosystem.
Then there's this whole not shipping iPhone without the charging adapter fiasco which they justified it by saying they 'care about the environment' and actually not so important the placing of the camera modules with iPhone 13 mini and vanilla iPhone 13 that looked like Apple is trying to do psychological test on all of us and they said it was because they made the module oh so slightly bigger and so couldn't place the modules vertically.
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I'm not complaining without offering the solution, though, and people also might have heard it before. They could offer options to sell the phones and charging adapters with discounts like Xiaomi does in China, which Xiaomi even offer to ship their phone with the adapter free of charge (pun intended). On the camera front, they could make the squared module slightly bigger, which they actually did when upgraded their iPhone 12 to 13 series anyway.
(This is just me ranting, what I found funny was one of this Apple fangirl also called me out on Instagram when I mentioned the camera module thing and she told me the same thing with Apple.)
The point is that I don't like how Apple justify things the way they did so that Android OEMs will follow these toxic manners and what I called growing tumor or cancer, which I also hate these days with the millenials and their fucking FOMO, but that is another thing for another time. That ONE thing a really, REALLY appreciate that Apple did recently was the Self Service Repair, where they allow their customers to have access for Apple's genuine parts and tools. BIG Respect.
Oh and I also still manage to like Apple even just a little bit when Steve Jobs (RIP) was still around. Now that he's gone, Apple just becoming more unbearable. Again, I don't hate the products, it's all about the company itself.
However, that's not necessarily a bad thing, like all things are. This cancer called Apple should not be treated because, hey, competition is a very, very good thing and who knows, maybe someday Apple will change my thoughts around and as a self-proclaimed tech journalist, I'd love to be proven wrong, as tech enthusiasts should be.
