Is iOS actually THIS unreliable?

[Mad Spoons]

All I hear about in the press is about how iOS "just works" and is "reliable" and "stable" and "seamless" etc, etc, etc. I hear about how the quality of the software is uniformly better. Although I haven't owned an iOS device since I sold my iPad 2, my observations of people with iPhones seem to suggest otherwise.

Ever since Android 4.0, I've been delighted with the Android experience. I'm currently running with a Galaxy S6, and aside from the slightly less than ideal battery life, I couldn't be happier. It works the way I need it to work. It does the things I need it to do. All the apps I use day to day work flawlessly. Yes, occasionally I do have to wipe my cache partition or reinstall an app or figure out a way to silence a rogue app that's draining my battery, but these instances ate few and far between. And, for the record, I'd like to point out that I rely heavily on my phone. It's essentially my main computer. I run my entire life through it. So I need to use something that WORKS.

Almost everyone I work with uses iPhone. We use a number of apps to get our jobs done, but every day I hear a new complaint from someone.

EVERNOTE
"My notebook isn't syncing."
"I didn't get the work chat."
"It's not showing the updates."
"This app is stupid."

GROUPME
"I didn't get the message."
"The app always crashes."
"The app must not be refreshing properly." (I've heard this several times and still don't know what it means.)

FACEBOOK MESSENGER
"I never got the notification."
"The app won't stay open long enough for me to reply to you."
"I hate this app."
"I got the notification but couldn't figure out where it came from."
"My messages won't send."

I could go on and on with more examples.

Meanwhile, I get complaints from coworkers and friends about how everything would be better if I would just switch and have iMessage, and then life would supposedly be great.

Every day it's a new complaint about a new app. Complaints about apps that work fine for me. Oddly, the only recurring issue I have on Android since 4.0 is the unreliability of SMS and MMS messages between me and iPhone users. I blame this on iMessage, another problematic piece of software, it would seem. Yet sometimes I feel tempted to switch to iOS just for the iMessage to remove all of this aggravation from my life.

So, what am I to make of this? Either iOS is stable and the apps are great, or they aren't. Does Apple deliberately handicap apps that aren't its own so as to discourage people from using other platforms? Or, is everyone I deal with just technologically illiterate and experiencing bad cases of user error?

Is iOS really the total ****show that it seems to be from where I stand?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Aquila]

In 2010 and 2011 they had a much more valid argument. Stability and whatnot are fine on iOS and it is very comparable to Android. My sense is that some people are going to have issues no matter what you put in front of them - and every platform will have people that find/create those issues. As far as SMS/MMS, for a long time Apple did act as if there were no devices that were not connected to iMessage. This creates a lot of problems and they have been taking steps to correct their mistakes on messaging... as for whether or not you should switch, I can't say. I can say that if you are competent with Android and are able to find what you like that you'll probably be ok on iOS as well.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

All I hear about in the press is about how iOS "just works" and is "reliable" and "stable" and "seamless" etc, etc, etc. I hear about how the quality of the software is uniformly better. Although I haven't owned an iOS device since I sold my iPad 2, my observations of people with iPhones seem to suggest otherwise.

Ever since Android 4.0, I've been delighted with the Android experience. I'm currently running with a Galaxy S6, and aside from the slightly less than ideal battery life, I couldn't be happier. It works the way I need it to work. It does the things I need it to do. All the apps I use day to day work flawlessly. Yes, occasionally I do have to wipe my cache partition or reinstall an app or figure out a way to silence a rogue app that's draining my battery, but these instances ate few and far between. And, for the record, I'd like to point out that I rely heavily on my phone. It's essentially my main computer. I run my entire life through it. So I need to use something that WORKS.

Almost everyone I work with uses iPhone. We use a number of apps to get our jobs done, but every day I hear a new complaint from someone.

EVERNOTE
"My notebook isn't syncing."
"I didn't get the work chat."
"It's not showing the updates."
"This app is stupid."

GROUPME
"I didn't get the message."
"The app always crashes."
"The app must not be refreshing properly." (I've heard this several times and still don't know what it means.)

FACEBOOK MESSENGER
"I never got the notification."
"The app won't stay open long enough for me to reply to you."
"I hate this app."
"I got the notification but couldn't figure out where it came from."
"My messages won't send."

I could go on and on with more examples.

Meanwhile, I get complaints from coworkers and friends about how everything would be better if I would just switch and have iMessage, and then life would supposedly be great.

Every day it's a new complaint about a new app. Complaints about apps that work fine for me. Oddly, the only recurring issue I have on Android since 4.0 is the unreliability of SMS and MMS messages between me and iPhone users. I blame this on iMessage, another problematic piece of software, it would seem. Yet sometimes I feel tempted to switch to iOS just for the iMessage to remove all of this aggravation from my life.

So, what am I to make of this? Either iOS is stable and the apps are great, or they aren't. Does Apple deliberately handicap apps that aren't its own so as to discourage people from using other platforms? Or, is everyone I deal with just technologically illiterate and experiencing bad cases of user error?

Is iOS really the total ****show that it seems to be from where I stand?

Posted via the Android Central App

See highlighted. I never have to do that on my iPhone.

My S6 was a mess honestly. It was laggy and had terrible battery life. The Note 5 was much better in these areas.

Some of the problems your coworkers are complaining about are probably app specific. Evernote might not do background sync (Spotify will not download music when not in the foreground for example). The same might be true for the other apps as well. I don't use them so I can't say for sure. But it's not really fair to blame the platform for app specific issues.

I have had issues with apps on Android as well, but I don't blame Android.

Other than that I agree with the Assassin.