You’re misunderstanding. The government isn’t arguing that they’re preventing people from switching to Android, but that they’re running a monopoly within the iPhone ecosystem.
Comment on U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly
flora_explora@beehaw.org 6 months ago
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entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Definitely iPhone’s. With all the other smartphone brands, if you want to switch, all your apps and data can be transferred over. For example I have used four different brands of smartphone, and the process of transferring everything was straightforward. In contrast, Apple makes if hard to transfer to a non-Apple device without losing all your data and apps, essentially creating a barrier to people changing to a different type of phone that simply doesn’t exist for people changing from, say, Samsung to HTC. Thus Apple effectively has a monopoly on customers that are trapped in its ecosystem.
Jesus_666@feddit.de 6 months ago
I’m the spirit of fairness I will nitpick you.
Firstly, porting apps over between Android devices works seamlessly only if those apps come from the Play Store. Android has no provisions for auto-transferring e.g. F-Droid and its apps. So it’s no wonder you can’t transfer your iOS apps (which might not even have Android versions). But it is true that auto-transfers of Play Store apps between different Android spins is seamless.
Secondly, whether and how easily you can modify or replace your Android is dependent on the phone’s manufacturer. A Pixel is a very different beast from an Xperia in that regard. Still, Google do provide AOSP and are very mod-friendly on their own devices. Apple very much aren’t.
frog@beehaw.org 6 months ago
The fact that Android lets you use F-Droid, or just install apk’s yourself, again means you’re not tied to a specific phone manufacturer. You can switch to a different phone and redownload all your F-Droid apps and transfer the standalone apk’s over. So even without autotransfer, it’s not difficult to keep everything.
Jesus_666@feddit.de 6 months ago
True. It’s just the automated transfer that doesn’t work.
I didn’t bring up F-Droid’s very existence as an argument because iOS also allows a form of sideloading these days. Android still makes it a lot easier but Apple isn’t entirely out of the loop anymore. Baby steps, I guess.
Maeve@kbin.social 6 months ago
Yep. I'm in that situation now because my iPhone is about to be obsolete, so replacing the battery makes no sense.