I'm Back on iOS

17 Dec 2024 | ~6 minute read

Yes, you read that right, folks. I've decided to flip myself back to team Apple and have ditched my new Pixel 8.

So after 2 weeks running the Pixel 8 as my primary phone, I've decided to return it and have gone back to my crusty old iPhone 13 Mini. But why on earth would I leave the beautifully open world of Android in favour of Apple's walled garden?

In all honesty, the stock Android experience on the Pixel was very nice, and there was no single "this is a deal-breaker" moment. Instead there were a number of smaller issues and the environment itself just didn't feel like home.

I can't possibly talk about all the little issues in detail, so I've listen some of the more prevalent reasons below, and I'll elaborate on some of those, after.

This is a dump of my raw notes while using Android.

Interconnecting and workarounds

So most of what I've listed above revolves around interconnecting with my Mac. I absolutely love my Mac and it isn't going anywhere, so whatever mobile I use needs to work easily with it. I'm not one of those people who uses all the Apple interconnectedness, but I'm happy if I'm able to do things like getting photos I take on my phone, on my Mac.

But my god this is so fucking hard to do. I'm not sure if this is an Apple issue or a Google one. I assume it's a Google one, as they offer other apps, just not Google Photos. But we all know Apple likes to lock their shit down to outsiders, so it's hard to say. 🤷‍♂️

Either way, the Mac isn't going anywhere, so that's a problem. I don't want to be emailing my photos to my laptop like some kind of heathen. And I certainly don't want to be standing up tools that bridge the gap, as it results in more shit for me to manage, and more complexity, which is the opposite of what I want.

Notifications

OMG notifications are so painful on Android. On iOS, an app will ask you if you want to enable notifications, and if you say no, that's it. Done. On Android, many apps seem to ask over and over if you want to enable notifications.

It's often something like "to get the best out of this app, you need to enable notifications". But I hate notifications. The only ones I have enabled are for phones calls, everything else on my phone is silent and I check when I want to, not when my phone tells me to.

Repeat notifications also seemed to be the case for permission requests. Lots of apps kept asking me over and over to enable permissions. No, Life360, you don't need access to my fucking contacts!

On iOS this just isn't a thing. You set the permissions on first run and that's it, you're never asked again.

Aside from app notifications, I kept getting notifications form Google about its services, too. I'd dismiss the notification, because I didn't want the service, only for it to appear again a day or so later.

Say it with me folks - we 👏🏻 don't 👏🏻 want 👏🏻 ads 👏🏻 on 👏🏻 our 👏🏻 phones.

The Google ick

The fact is, iOS is more private than Google and as much as I tried, the ick that comes with using Google products just couldn't be ignored.

Every time I received a notification from an app, especially a Google app, asking for more permissions, or an system notification trying to sell me the latest Google service, my ick grew a little more.

Apple isn't perfect on the privacy front, either. But it's a damn sight better than Google.

I know I could have run a custom ROM, but I don't have the time for all the potential headache that brings.

Making the decision to move back

So I had all this stuff rattling round my grey matter and I was teetering on the edge of switching back to my iPhone 13 Mini. My wife is usually the voice of reason in our relationship, so I asked her opinion.

The first thing she asked was what the motivations were for moving to the Pixel in the first place?

To which I answered 3 fold:

  1. My phone is starting to show signs of age
  2. I wanted to try something new
  3. I didn't want to pay the Apple tax for a new phone

Being the incredibly intelligent woman she is, she replied with something like:

Ok, so you've tried something new and you didn't like it. We can afford for a new iPhone, so why not send the Pixel back and get one?

So that's what I did. I've returned the Pixel back to Google, and I moved back to my iPhone, which took all of 30 mins thanks to iCloud backups. I have to say, it immediately felt like home. It's just what I'm used to, I suppose.

The 13 Mini does now feel too small, having used the Pixel for a couple weeks. And the battery life is dog shit. So on advice of my wife, I have an iPhone 16 being delivered today. 🙃

Final thoughts

This post is bashing Google and Android quite a bit, so I wanted to finish by commenting on some of the stuff that Android does really well - far better than iOS, in my opinion:

So it definitely wasn't all bad oner on Android. It just wasn't the right fit for me. If I ever move away from Mac on my laptop, I'd seriously consider a longer term move to Android, but my M1 Macbook Air is so bloody good, I can't ever see that happening.

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