Maybe you're just not a willing idiot. Most people are idiots, so not being one would make you feel out of touch with the general populace I suppose.

Apple buys off-the-shelf components, (eg. intel processors) puts them in a shiny box, marks up the price by (not hyperbole) about 400%, and then sells them to fools.

They also include some of the most user-hostile, closed-source, arbitrarily restrictive operating systems that are not designed to aid the user in *using* their computer, but rather restrict the user so they'll have to buy more apple shit, user more apple services and become locked into apples ecosystem, as they also make damn sure apple shit is only compatible with other apple shit.

I currently make my living working on stuff for smartphones. I own a $50 fliphone with no data plan.

I wish there was a choice other than Apple's gated-community dominance or Google's spy-on-all-your-actions in a slower, buggier open-ish (but not really) environment.

@Solro.
There is, even in the smartphone arena. You can get Linux smartphones. (Or install it on an Android one)

Really? Do you have any more information?

@Yuck

So if u have an Android device this random article might be a good starting place

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-smartphone-operating-system s/

The smartphones currently on the market that come with Linux on them already are not great. Theres a bunch in the pipeline. Right now afaik you'd be better off buying decent hardware from Samsung or whoever and putting Linux on it yourself.

Working for a supplier to the smartphone industry I also recognize that there is never any limit to what is considered useful or productive to grow the business.

There's no way Apple is marking up 400%

It's got to be at least 800%


Last I heard the manufacturing cost for an iPhone was around $60 USD but that was a few generations ago.

@Zircon I mean that their laptops for example are about 4 times as expensive as an equivalent non Apple one. They're marking up the retail price about 4 times more then their competitors.

Apple does typically have nicer (read; more expensive) displays and case materials on their laptops than the cheapest laptops with the same internals. Also you do need to acknowledge that Apple does spend money to operate many national stores that function as local tech support centers for their products. With the cheapest Korean and Chinese laptops the only tech support option you usually have is return it quickly for a refund or spend your own money to ship it to a repair center for weeks at a time.

Just the side by side reviews I’ve seen whenever Samsung or apple release their latest flagship phone. I’m speaking of UI speeds and such, not pure processing benchmark tests.

Android's one big disadvantage was that for most of a decade audio support was so poorly implemented that it was impossible to do realtime audio work under android without latency in the tens of milliseconds (which isn't an issue fr gaming or anything but makes it completely useless for music). It was fuly acknowledged early on and they did nothing to address it for at least 5 years (I THINK it's finally dealt with but only after a third party company developed a proprietary fix for it themselves and was attempting to market it directly to hardware vendors for at least a year) which allowed iOS to corner the audiovisual market despite being fairly crap.

@Solro. Are there any metrics for those UI speeds? iOS has a lot of pointless animation and fades etc built into its UI.
I dunno where ure getting this Android UI lag perception from. Perhaps you only have experience with new decent iphones and shitty Android phones?

@Zircon... Man I would never have considered doing any audio work on iOS or Android... Theyre just not proper operating systems at all. Who does that?? I'll stick with my laptop + venerable Edirol UA-101

Just side by side comparisons doing relatively the same tasks, opening the same apps, etc.

If not for google’s spyware I probably would be using Android already and definitely for my next phone, because I like 3.5mm jacks.