Pro-Consumer

Amen, but you wouldn't know it if you just listened to the mainstream media. This is why I posted this to share the fundamental issues with iOS, since...about forever, and yet every tech channel seems to gloss over this. I'm hoping mainstream media picks up on this, and forces Apple to do better. Get rid of the 30% profit on digital media sold via apps (hahaha Apple will never do this unless forced by governments), allow other default apps (just like every other major OS - Windows / Android), have better contacts / calendar apps, etc etc. Apple doesn't do anything for consumers unless the mainstream media picks it up, and makes it an issue, it seems. Apple certainly doesn't care about the consumer, at all.

Good point, but I was talking about iOS devices only, not MacOS devices.

Amen to that. It seems most people only point to Google and yet happily post away on Facebook their full details of their lives, use other tech providers with their most intimate data... Apple's latest FaceTime bug is the most ironic. A consumer tried to warn them repeatedly about this incredible bug, and they only reacted when it was picked up by the media. If Apple really cared about user privacy, they would have taken that first report seriously (via multiple channels - twitter, email, phone calls, etc) instead of waiting for the media to report about this. Shows Apple's hypocrisy.

You certainly do have a choice - you can choose not to use their email, their Google docs, etc. I use hotmail / Outlook.com for some of my emails, yahoo for some others (mostly spam), and Gmail for some of it. I use Office 365 / one drive for some of my docs, Google Docs for others. I'm leery of the other tech companies just as I am with Google. However, I've never had reason for any alarm with google services. My Yahoo account was hacked repeatedly (and it turns out all yahoo accounts were compromised). My Google accounts have never been compromised, ever, thanks to Google authenticator and full HTTPS encryption everywhere. People seem uneducated when they don't understand the whole picture, and just use FUD and paranoia to point to Google as the big bad wolf. I guarantee Microsoft (including LinkedIn), Yahoo, and others harvest every bit of data just like Google, if not more (Facebook is the worst by far). Only Google seems to be under the microscope while many others seem to get away with it.

I choose to give Google whatever information I feel comfortable with, whereas with Apple you have no choice. For instance I always use incognito mode on my Android Chrome browser and PC, don't log into any of my Google accounts while browsing, give Google limited contacts details, etc. I control what Google sees. I also give Google kudos for consumer privacy for being first to: allow full end to end HTTPS email browsing capability for any major free email provider (my horrible yahoo / hotmail services lacked this for years and years while Gmail was light years ahead) Google does / did champion HTTPS for websites well ahead of other major tech companies. Google set up free 2 factor authentication, and was first to market with Google Authenticator app, years and years before any other major tech company did so (including Apple, with its notorious iCloud hack) Without Google doing some of these things, my Yahoo / Hotmail accounts would be still as junky as they have always been. Google forced others to step up their game in terms of user security. Is Google perfect? No, but imho they are a level or two above other tech companies in terms of privacy / security. I don't know why most people miss this point as well. I think it's far too easy and lazy for people to point to Google as "mega company" who doesn't care about your privacy, and point to Apple as caring about this, whereas the reality is much more complex and Google does a lot more for consumer security / privacy than most people are aware of or even think of.

I was making this from my personal list of angst of using Apple products, and I'm glad Linus mentioned a couple of them. However, the other stuff I have mentioned is so basic, fundamental, and yet I've never seen any popular tech reviewer mention this... it is mind boggling. There is so much Apple hype and yet no one seems to mention these basic issues in pretty much any video I've seen on Youtube. Just very bizarre. It just blows my mind every reviewer focuses on how nice the phones feel in hand (give me a freaking break), and yet none address the fundamental issues, of function over form. Linus seems to be more of a practical, more common sense driven channel, and yet still misses some of these key, basic things (and no, it shouldn't take 20 minutes to address these items I posted - it certainly didn't take 20 minutes to read it).

I've been watching the Linus Tech Tips channel for a while now, and Linus's recent video on why Android is better than Apple, misses the mark on some of the key reasons Apple still sucks (I've been using iOS / Android both since 2010). Here are the top reasons that Linus missed (and just about EVERY tech reviewer...why this is, is a mystery): I) Apple greed: Apple's greed has pushed consumers to lose some abilities to do things that you can do on Android or PC: You can't buy digital content natively on iOS apps - Amazon, Google Play, VUDU, Audible, etc... I don't know how Apple can get away with their onerous terms of charging 30% for every sale via an app that you must use on iOS unless you root / jailbreak your iOS device (hard to do). I mean, imagine if Microsoft back in the 90's started forcing every website and program to pay 30% to MS just for the privilege of you being able to buy content from a Windows device. Imagine how quickly this would be shut down. How can Apple get away with this monopolistic behavior and have the EU and other countries just sit idly by?? This breaks all common sense and I'm bewildered that Apple, the richest corporation in manking history, can get away with it. Apple has never supported SD cards, user replaceable batteries, all anti-consumer. Then they remove the headphone jack (one of my biggest pet peeves), and stick with lightning cable while the entire industry used microUSB and now has moved to USB-C. Sucking the consumers dry of money for every penny they are worth. Yes, Apple claims to care about privacy and not selling their users "privacy" for profit, but they apparently have sold their customers down the river for profit in just about everything else. (you did mention this...kudos) Make no mistake, your pocketbook is Apple's greatest goal, and their corporate marketing of caring about your privacy is about as hollow as it gets. II) Just plain junky iOS functionality: My iOS contacts are an absolute mess. I use my iOS devices for work accounts and personal accounts. However, because of the way the contacts app works in iOS, there is no easy to way to see, or designate which account I am creating a contact for. (In Android, you can designate which account you're creating a contact for, simple field where you select and choose). In iOS, my work contacts are in my personal accounts, and my personal contacts are in my work accounts. This is because you can only select which default account to create contacts to, and it's a huge pain to change that every time you create a contact, so as a results my contacts are jumbled everywhere. This could be a huge privacy issue as I put my personal contacts in my work email accounts, and work email contacts in my personal accounts. Insane. The native calendar app is a huge ball of turd. I had a blackberry before iOS, and the blackberry calendar was miles ahead of iOS calendar - I could set an appointment to "private", share my calendar, forward meeting invites to other folks. The iOS calendar is such a limited POS I'm shocked no one calls this out as a huge weakness. Linus mentioned this, but it's a huge pain - I like to set Google Maps as my default navigation app, EVERY time. How Apple gets away with not giving this option to consumers, and yet Microsoft was sued and taken to task by the EU and other governments for not allowing defaults for browsers and other apps... mind blowing. How does Apple do a mind-distortion field with governments and get away with this? File system limitations - I store important and sensitive files like my password KeePass files natively on my Android devices and Windows devices. I do not want to put my KeePass files on any cloud service. And yet Apple doesn't allow you to do this. You must put your most sensitive files on a cloud service to allow iOS to access those files. Yes, Apple cares about your privacy.... /sarcasm The settings app in iOS is a huge mess. You may have an insanely huge list of apps settings to scroll to under the settings app, and each app may or may not have its own settings area with some of the same settings, or not. Android's settings makes a lot more sense, just like how Windows use to do it - allowing each app to have its own settings that you don't have to go to control panel for every time to change something. This is basic UI design, and yet Apple seems to not give a flying leap about usability. This along with the lack of universal back button (yes you mentioned this) is huge. These are basic, obvious major problems with Apple / iOS, and yet I've never seen any tech reviewer mention this at all. What are you all smoking?? Forget customization and all the other stuff, this is serious stuff that affects most IOS users every day. And yet no one acknowledges the pink elephant in the room. Linus needs to do better, be better informed, and let the public know what's really wrong with IOS if they're going to put such a video out.