Instagram chief's mic drop: 'Android's now better than iOS'
Falling a little short in the details, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has announced that Android is better than iOS, then dropped the mic and moved on.
There's no rule that says you have to like iOS or Android, and for all the technical differences, it is ultimately an indefinable personal preference. Unless you're Adam Mosseri and just plain dislike iOS so much that you want to proclaim it loudly.
YouTuber MKBHD set the ball rolling on Threads by asking for people's "best tech hot takes." The idea was that popular comments would rise to the top, and the very top one is now Mosseri's.
"Android's now better than iOS," it reads. In full.
Saying literally not one syllable more, it's not possible to be absolutely sure whether he's referring to the entire systems, or just to Threads on them. But the majority of replies have presumed he means the whole of Android beats the whole of iOS.
They aren't exactly long on details, either, but there's passion and there's argument and there are good points on both sides. There is also the usual cat-calling, again on both sides, and the thread has become most of what gives social media such a good name.
There is one key difference between Mosseri and everyone else on the thread, though. He runs Instagram -- and he's got form for disliking Apple devices.
Specifically, he has previously shrugged off the idea of making an iPad version of the Instagram app. He says that iPad users are "still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority."
Those paltry few million people will just have to keep using the iPhone app on their iPads, then. Mosseri could at least have added "Don't expect Threads to get an iPadOS app soon, either."
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Comments
Wake me up when you can come up with an argument for how yet another social media clone technology makes the world a better place.
Since nearly the dawn of the duopoly, Apple and others have claimed that some annually significant percentage of Android users have switched to iOS. Oddly though Android continues to exist a decade and a half later, and in good numbers. How can that be if 10-14% of the ecosystem switch to Apple devices every year and smartphone adoption numbers aren't rising?
A conundrum.
I'd say that over recent years, iOS has taken a huge amount of influence from Android. Although it is a two way street, it definitely looks like Apple is loosening it's grip on key areas like personalisation.
For me, as someone who constantly has to dip into iOS to resolve issues, it can be very frustrating to see how some things seem so kludgy there.
That could be due to my wife's particular situation/configuration or how certain apps 'behave' but it doesn't feel intuitive to me.
It looks like an official WhatsApp Messenger isn’t even available to download as an iPhone app on iPads.
Meta Quest is dead, by the way. Mosseri Is probably a little sad about that, too.
Disclaimer: I don’t use any Meta apps.
"how certain apps 'behave' but it doesn't feel intuitive to me" - I also have the same feeling but I always thought it was due to me being born and brought up with Windoze OS. I am surprised to see this from you, a person who has primarily MacOS experience.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zfHTRMnqY5I
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hVUz0W6StNE
One reason, Microsoft and Google are hanging around MacOS and iOS is the overall high quality of the ecosystems Apple has created, particularly for users, and for developers good developers to make money, however another more insidious reason both hang around, is as a rear guard action, because the Mac ecosystems are large enough that some good small to medium size developers could incubate within the Apple ecosystems, and possibly grow into 800 pound gorillas in the future which is part of the reason both will hang around the Apple ecosystems to make sure no one rises up, and with that in mind the new Apple Vision Pro ecosystem will have all three vultures in attendance, Google, Microsoft and Meta sitting on the fence, squatting, with minor cameo appearances, by Spotify and Sweeney Todd complaining all the way.
Android better? Not when they’re writing the check to Apple for billions and squatting within MacOS and iOS.
Not surprising most people just create web apps in JavaScript on Android. Which is likely Google's plan anyways since it's easier for them to gather rich data on customers via the web than monitoring via Android itself (where figuring out what people are doing is more complex).
Apple's equivalent technologies (Objective-C and Swift) are very cleanly designed and intuitive, and integrate easily with cross-platform code, which isn't surprising since they were designed in-house rather than via clone and own (Java) and a 3rd party (Jetbrains created Kotlin).
I think most consumer problems with iOS stem from the fact that Google invests heavily in Chromium/web technologies, at the expense of their native technologies. Whereas Apple is the reverse. So if you spend your whole life in web apps and/or a browser then the experience is going to be better. Also, most web apps completely disregard any sort of platform UI standards. So again, if you're used to the wild west of web app/page interfaces, the native platform interfaces are going to seem less intuitive.
As someone who tries to avoid using web apps as much as possible because I find them slower to use, less intuitive, and battery killers, I find iOS very intuitive to configure and navigate.
Let's move past the talking points and get to a real technical analysis of what makes a good piece of technology that enriches our lives. And how the actions of the companies behind those technologies sets an example for future generations. With that in mind, it's not surprising to see the current behaviour of tech company leaders.