This sounds like something that hasn't been true for 5-10 years tbh. At least not within the Pixel family. I upgrade phones without a single hiccup. My older phones are still around and used daily by my kids with no problema. I've had to wipe a phone and restore from the cloud backup and it was a matter of minutes to be usable, and was effectively like nothing had happened as soon as my apps and their data finished downloading.

On the other hand, the phone just works,

Same with android

upgrades between devices are seamless,

Same with android

and the phone retains value after 4 years.

Aight you got me there, except for that apple has been proven in court to slow down their older models of phones

Plus, the backup restoration is insane. If you stole my phone, I’d be back to where I was within an hour or two

Same with android

— all of which is driving to Apple and waiting on a sales clerk to pull an iPhone from the back, then going to a store owned by my cell carrier to register the device on their network.

I just go to walmart

No device re-customization at all in the equation.

Same with android

There is nothing like it on Android.

False

5GB is a lame amount for a base tier of storage in 2024 but it’s hardly abuse.

I agree, if people are willing to buy into apple they get what apple serves them.

It's pretty cool how you can just download any app and install it, also how you can customize the phone to look however you want, run whatever software you want, and all for under $200

Oh wait

I have had zero issues restoring or moving between android phones. What in the world are you talking about?

Meanwhile my mom forgot her apple password and their customer support was so unhelpful she had to get a new account after talking to them for months. They refused to let her reset her password.

Apple makes my life as the family sysadmin significantly easier. If I only had to worry about myself I’d do Android with a privacy focused ROM, but I doubt I could handle my entire family doing that. No way am I putting them on stock Android.

It would be nice if there was some competition but I’m not holding my breath.

There is nothing like it on Android

In the past, I've always made a conscious choice not to try to do it that way on Android. Getting a new phone is a good chance to reset, only install apps that I specifically still use, etc.

But in the past, I've always replaced a phone because the old one was so old the battery couldn't get through even one day, so I had plenty of time to manually back up and take care of any specific data I really needed to be sure about. Recently, I had to get a new phone prematurely after I crashed and landed directly on the old one. So I did use the Pixel's restore functionality as I upgraded from the broken Pixel 6 Pro to the new Pixel 7a. And it was completely seamless. Kept me logged in to apps that I never thought would stay logged in, remembered wifi passwords, everything.

Of course, all of that was only possible because I casted my screen to my TV and plugged in a mouse and keyboard. The screen was too broken to approve the transfer otherwise.

Drive is 15 GB

What’s a “computer”?

You can still do backups to your desktop like you used to do, it's just not usually necessary.

Amazon Photos works. Dropbox works. NextCloud works. What service are they blocking?

The article is wrong.

They need to make it your choice (of compliant options where compliant != neutering for the USgovernment) for the default background running option tho, you're not defending the hero we deserve, only what is forced by their lax regulation

Right now, Apple selectively degrades the experience of effortless syncing thru any other modality than its in-house inferior option. That is wrong and monopolistic and antitrust-worthy action now that the technology is ubiquitous and Applehas the tools to ensure its done consistent with the Apple walled garden gestalt. A gated garden would not be so bad, hell, everybody has one basically

I can't wait till we get all the Europe stuff! And I'm all in on Apple, i just don't gratuitously defend their nonsense (upvoted by the way, im not the naysayer. You raise an important defense that needs to be dismantled)