After Almost 15 Years of Android, I’m Switching to Apple. Here’s Why.
Ah, the year was 2008. I had recently turned in my beloved Samsung flip phone and was enjoying the mobile connectivity of a Blackberry. I was contracting as an electrician at the time and being able to respond to clients efficiently was important to me. My phone was a tool, similar to the screwdrivers and pliers in my tool belt it helped me get work done. But friends around me were finding something else, something that brought fun with them wherever they went. The iPhone had made its way onto the scene.
For many years the going thought was that PC was for business and Apple was for creatives. Even though I am a creative, I had tried a MAC computer for awhile and didn’t see the advantage of the system. I disliked that I didn’t have full control over where I put icons or how I set up my desktop layout. I just couldn’t understand why a select few of my friends were so loyal to a system that I saw as restrictive. So, when the iPhone first came on the scene, I thought it was fun that they could play music or have an app that pretended to be a Zippo lighter but again, I saw no reason to pay the asking price for this device.
But, a few years later, as phones progressed, I started seeing fellow contractors using the iPhone at work. They would play music AND still be able to answer client emails. The devices looked sleek and it well in the pockets of jeans and coveralls. And most of all, there was so few buttons to trap dust and debris as I crawled under houses and through attics. And so, the Blackberry was traded in for an iPhone 3G. And I hated it.
Everything I had experienced with the MAC desktop I found on the iPhone. I had no say over where icons were placed. I couldn’t do things I thought were logical like placing most used apps near where my thumb was for easy access. I wanted the apps to be hidden away until I needed them, not crowding the precious screen real estate when I turned it on. The Zippo lighter and beer chugging app lost their appeal after just a few days. I felt I had no control over this device that I had paid a premium for. Eventually, I went down the rabbit hole of jailbreaking the phone and putting a custom OS on the device, trying to make it what I wanted. And, while that helped free up some restrictions, ultimately, I traded the phone in for my first Android.
The open platform was nice. The app drawer was nice. I could make my home screen simple and clean and that was nice too. And then came along widgets where I could put a little box with the weather and a larger clock for quick visibility. All of it was nice. And it was less expensive which was really nice. And so began my loyalty to an operating system; Android had won me over!
So, what happened? Why am I now writing this article? Why am I leaving something that fit so well into my life for something that never aligned with my wants?
Customer service.
Let me explain. Phones have become expensive, like very expensive. To illustrate this let’s take a look at the cost for the base model iPhone 3G in 2008 and compare it to the 14 Pro base model (the model that I have ordered to replace my Pixel 6 Pro but, more on that later) and relate that to the minimum wage of the time. I understand that there are more models of phones in the iPhone lineup that are less expensive but, the 3G was a flagship phone for it’s time and so I feel it best to compare flagship to flagship. Let’s also, for the ease of this, disregard all the withholdings from paychecks and just look at gross incomes.
The 3G base model with 8GB of memory retailed for $199 while today’s 14 Pro with 128GB of memory is $999. In 2008 the minimum wage in the United States was $6.55. This means that it took a little over 30.25 hours of work to earn enough income for the 3G; less than a week. The current minimum wage in the US is $7.25 which means that to earn enough for today’s 14 Pro flagship you would need to work a whopping 137.75 hours. That is just shy of an entire month of full-time work or 4.5 times as long as for the 3G!
I don’t bring this up as an argument for minimum wage increase but to illustrate just how expensive these devices have become. And the models I’ve chosen to compare aren’t even the most expensive, there are a number of models well into the $1000 price range! I bring this up because I, as these items increased in cost, also increased my expectations for how the companies providing them stand behind their products.
And here is where we come to my final straw with Google.
As a practice I try to buy quality and then keep it for as long as I can. I do this with vehicles, cooking pans, technology, anything. I had a pair of hiking boots for over 12 years and only replaced them because my feet changed shape enough with time that I no longer fit in them. So, when it came time to finally replace my long-lasting Pixel XL last November, I easily made the decision to pick up the Pixel 6 Pro. The specs and memory were way more than I needed so should have been able to easily last me as long as the XL did.
It didn’t.
It was buggy. Things didn’t work smoothly. The GPS regularly dropped out while driving around. Sometimes it would hang up for a moment before opening an app. I knew all the usual troubleshooting processes so, instead of sitting on hold for a technician to tell me “turn it off and back on again” I did all the steps on my own. I cleared caches, I force stopped malfunctioning apps, I did full factory resets (losing almost a day of productivity each time) all to no avail.
But, for the most part, I just dealt with it. It would eventually get me what I needed, and it was really only 5-10 seconds that I would have to wait. And so, I could ignore it. Until August of this year when I left Seattle and moved across the country to Vermont.
While I was living in Seattle, I knew the streets well. I had very little need of GPS other than to sometime find my way from a neighborhood back to a familiar street or highway. I rarely used navigation, more just looked at the map and saw the couple of turns I needed to make and that was that. However, here in Vermont I do not know the streets nearly as well. There’s not that many and I can get to most towns without guidance but, if I go to Burlington or some of the more out of the way areas, I can’t do that without assistance (yet). And so, I began using GPS more frequently and the device’s issues became a problem. Since the GPS would regularly drop out and navigation apps would freeze, I would frequently miss turns or drive long sections without being tracked only to be told to “make a U-turn” when it finally found me. This was problematic since missing an exit on the highway means 6 miles until the next opportunity to exit and turn about.
It was time to call into customer service. Fortunately, the hold on the first call wasn’t too long and the agent listened to what was wrong and what I had done and offered me $100 as a credit towards a new phone. Yup, $100 for a $900 phone just one year later. She said that the GPS dropping was a “known issue” and the engineers hadn’t figured it out yet. She mentioned that most of the cases resolve with a factory reset but since I had already done that step, I could have this credit. When I asked which OS update had addressed the GPS issue, I found that I had not done a factory reset after that month’s rollout. So, I agreed to do another factory reset and see what happened for the next few days. Notes were made and Chat IDs were shared.
Losing yet another day to factory resetting, re-downloading apps, signing in yet again, and generally restoring my phone I planned errands for the following day. In the morning, I hopped in my vehicle, map my route to my first destination in Burlington (a location I knew how to get to without guidance), and set off. Taking the few turns to get to the highway on-ramp I proceeded to join the westbound traffic.
And the GPS dropped me.
On this trip I brought a passenger with me who has a three-year-old iPhone SE on the same service as myself. She had GPS and reception for the entire distance while mine did not find me again until 35 minutes later when I exited the highway near my destination and came to a stop.
So, the next day I called back to customer service. And this time I was told my warranty had expired literally on the day I was now calling.
How did this happen? I’ve been paying the $9 a month for the device protection.
I could start a claim with the company providing the protection (Assurant) and they would inspect it for physical damage. For a fee of $149.
Uh, no. This isn’t a result of damage. I’ve been dealing with this “known issue” for some time now and expect Google to stand behind devices they know to be faulty.
“There is nothing more we can do” I was told.
“Can I speak to a supervisor?”
“Sir, this is the department that deals with the Pixel devices.”
“Did you hire yourself?”
“No.”
“Then can I speak to the person you report to?”
“Sir, there is nobody else for these phones.”
And that’s when I was done. I told the agent that it was unacceptable that a company as large as Google was fleecing their customers of such large amounts of money while not standing behind the products they sell and that I would be leaving them.
Because, I realized, in that moment while going through these interactions with customer service, that I no longer cared about placing icons exactly where I wanted. The allure of “open source” just wasn’t important to me anymore. What had become important were devices that just worked. And when they didn’t, the company would stand behind them. I realized the number of friends that had 5 to 6-year-old iPhones that continued to “just work”. I remembered friends that would have an issue with an Apple device, take them to a store, and come back with it fixed. I thought about the number of times someone has offered to FaceTime me into a moment so I could see and be seen because other video services regularly failed.
So, I did some research and talked to a few die-hard Apple fans. I asked about the changes to the OS and whether they thought I’d like the phone as a stand-alone device since I wouldn’t be taking advantage of the ecosystem. I was delighted to find that Apple offers a smaller sized device since my Pixel 6 Pro was stupidly large and made of very slippery material causing it to drop from my pocket, slide off couches, and continuously move about in my hand while I was trying to use it. I made a trip to the local Best Buy so I could put the devices in my hand and feel them. Finding the smaller version of the 14 Pro to be the most satisfactory feeling and thinking about the transition for a couple of days, I placed my order.
Sure, Apple may have a tighter control over their OS and maybe I’ll miss having the app drawer but, the devices just work. And that’s what’s important to me now.
