Does Apple just suck? Or does Android suck less?

On the day of Apple’s announcement of new iPhones, I had wondered why the partisanship? Android had been a more open platform, but maybe too free and unrestricted? If all the Android trolling correct, why had Samsung been setting up Tizen OS? Clearly Samsung had learned “know how” from being a provider of iPhone components. As the leader of market share on Android, Samsung had perhaps deduced,”Why not control the whole food chain?”, similar to Apple. On the other hand, Apple had lately seemed rather stale and derivative. I had thought,” Do I really need a fingerprint reader for security?” Had Apple totally forgotten about making valued added software features like a cross platform and hosted versions of an app like iTunes. Somehow, the 1990’s lesson of fitting in a Windows world had become a distant memory for Apple.

Here had been some advantages I had thought for Android platform?

Many form factors and price points for mobile phones.
Larger screens.
Expandable storage.
More free apps.
Support for industry standard micro usb cable (i.e. Blackberry – RIP) to support 3rd party add-ons (i.e. portable solar panels).
Not chained to any hardware platform for media (i.e. iTunes vs. Amazon).
Highly customizable interface.
Flash support.
Faster revisions of hardware.

For Apple, here had been a few interesting points in their favor.

Just works! Otherwise great support.
No filler apps from third parties.
Better than average battery life.
Built in support for midi devices.
Built in support for Cisco VPN support.
Built in support for Active Sync with app encryption.
Can remove device encryption by turning off the passcode.
Enterprise Single sign-on and VPN per App.
Interface continuity by keeping it simple.

The interface argument had been a very salient point for some of my IT peers and non-tech folks. I had seen some people struggle with transitioning to Android; however, the bigger lesson had been from Microsoft’s unfinished Windows 8 interface. I had hoped Apple would allow Next style tear away menus in iOS or OS X. Though this rational had been shelved for consistency in user experience.

So here had been some things I don’t like on both platforms.

1. Lack of real built-in anti-virus and firewall protection.

2. Security on the Droid and Mac, well there had been a lot of room for improvement. The scales had seemed to go back and forth. Apple had better learn to be better at full disclosure with vulnerabilities.

3. More tablet apps optimized for larger screens on Droid.

4. Better life cycle for Droid phones! For all that openess and freedom, somehow my old beat up iPhone 3GS had been able to outlast quite a few Gingerbread devices. Outside of HTC, Samsung, Google, many Android OEMs had never pushed through to Jellybean, let alone an OS level upgrade. Why should someone had cared? For example, Fiberlink’s Maas360 MDM had been written to only support Droid OS 4.0 and above. Still somehow, this app had run on the antiquated iPhone 3GS.

Regardless of the platform discussion above, what I had known what sucks more, continuing on with my old iPhone3GS.With announcements from Apple , I had supposed to take a look and listen. Though that Windows Phone interface had looked pretty clean, simple and cool. How many megapixels had that Nokia Lumnia? Whoops, Nokia had just sold their mobile business to Microsoft, hmm.

Shopping for a newer phone this month, the key questions I still had of this writing this blog:

“Will I be productive?”

“How about battery life?”

“How about panorama shots?”

“How about slow and fast motion video?”

“What of my $175 Apple gift card?”

“Those Samsung phones had awfully big screens!”

“How will the phone make me feel?”

“How will the phone make you feel?”

What had you thought and why?