Don’t get me wrong. Like I said, I’m not a fanboy, and acknowledge the guilt of both “sides” when it comes to this sort of fanaticism. My problem is with users. Multiple people I'm friends with and work with run all Mac at their homes, and brag about how their new iPhones are "10x times better" than Android devices – in every iteration of course – 3, 3gs, 4 4s, because they've bought them all. The problem is, they've never touched, much less used an Android device. So how could they possibly know? "But why is it better?" I ask. No joke, most answers dance around "because Apple/Steve Jobs would never make a bad product."
Ok, that may support why it's a good product, but not why it's "100 times better." How was that purchase fueled by anything other than blind brand loyalty? I know people on the other end of the spectrum too, who have purchased top-of-the-line Android smartphones and touted their superiority over iAnything while at the same time having never even held any sort of iPhone in their hands. I have no respect for these kinds of opinions on either side, because they're not based in any kind of logic or fact. And while I see this on both platforms, I do get it more from Apple users than Android users. There is still the minority of users that have actually played with both and have a logical preference one way or the other. THAT I can get on board with. I've used both and I prefer Android. Other colleagues have used both and prefer Apple. Some are warming up to WIndows phones. Fair enough. I can't argue that because they’ve done the research to actually know.
With this so called battle raging on for years, why do I decide to bring this up now? One word, kids: Instagram. That’s right, the photo app loved and adored by scores of iPhone users is no longer Apple exclusive, and as of yesterday was free to download for Android users. Now I never truly realized the wonder of this product – in my eyes it was a photo editing app that allowed a user to put a limited number of effects on a picture, providing one-click sharing to social media. And after I downloaded it myself, my opinion didn’t really change. It’s still nothing more than a handful of post-processing options that allows me to share to social media from within the app. As such my personal reaction, and the reaction of most Android users I know, wasn’t too much more than a collective “Meh” for the day. I just don’t feel the need to make my pictures look like they came from 1977, like one of the named filters in the app can do. And I’m perfectly capable of instantly sharing pictures from my phone to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ with the touch of a button. So even having Instagram now, the chances of me regularly using it are fairly slim.
Article comments
1 - Alex
Having fans on both sides is a matter of marketologists doing their jobs. But for developers this means additional problems if they want to make an app that works equally well on all devices.
2 - Nancy Brown
The fight between iPhone and Android os is never ending with a latest turn being the Samsung patents case, iPhone still seems to have an upper hand with better innovations to provide, while Android is affordable and as a great market around the world.