I always enjoy the vague yet threatening online comment. I'm of the opinion that this is from one of the better bot farms who have learned if you make people nervous, you can control their choices.
I see how I was too vague. I decided to post without elaborating because I thought the concerns were obvious from previous HN discussions about Mozilla announcements of different sorts, and because I was running out of time, which probably was a mistake.
The Pocket partnership and acquisition, the 250 layoffs with the 4x CEO pay increase, the Mullad partnership for a worse offering, are all concerning and they do destroy trust, but my primary concern is the apparent lack of focus. Can Mozilla sustain all these potentially positive initiatives (like this recent announcement or https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/)? I very much doubt it. And I hope this changes before Firefox usage drops even further.
I'm not a Mozilla hater. I have contributed Firefox translations in the past, built extensions, and I even collaborate actively with some of the projects that I think are distracting Mozilla.
I'd suggest that any article written "without any knowledge of the topic" is of zero value. I'd define spam as zero value posts/messages. Ergo, it's spam. Not sure how you can argue it isn't.
Not attacking you, I'm just interested in your defence of this sort of thing
"without any knowledge on the topic" refers to the time BEFORE the user uses the tool. During and after the tool the user will certainly have knowledge after reading and curating the questions and answers, right? Just like, before you read about a topic you "have no knowledge" but after, you might say that you have some now.
I find it interesting that everytime something like this comes up: a person (usually female) gets fired from a tech firm and alleges abuse and toxic work place, the response from the Hacker News crowd is is heavily negative (to the person) and tries to say the person is crazy/overly sensitive/hysterical.
I'm not saying this specific person is right, but if the argument in the comments of "if everyone you work with is a moron, then maybe the problem is you" is true (and I think it can be) then we must consider that some of these stories are true and some people (and it appears to be often women) are being treated abysmally at work.
If Apple can scan people's photos (just in case there's something nasty there) then they should welcome government investigation of their workplaces (just in case).
I find it interesting that every time this topic comes up there’s a comment like yours that spreads falsehoods and distortions about the state of HN. For example, won’t find much love for Bizzard’s sexism:
If the answer is no then whats the point of school? I cant read this article though as it didnt even actually address the question in the first few paragraphs
That is Betteridge's law. Personally I believe it could also be 'we don't know'. In all other cases the headline would be different (an affirmative statement).
> On my ancient and overloaded S8, the camera loads in under a second after double tapping power.
Lucky you.
> These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.
Well, here I am. I don't think I touched an apple product from 2012 to summer 2018 because I disliked OS X so intensely. So not exactly the biggest Apple fan.
> That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.
I talk about normal steady state usage after a month or two. My iPhone is still smooth. My Androids were hardly ever smooth even shortly after installation. YMMW. If it works for you, more power to you.
Edit: I know Android devices can be good. My Samsung S II was amazing for its time.
your phone is the exception, not the norm. Apple are well known for choosing hardware that delivers a great user experience. Their choices may not cater to your specific requirements but their sales figures strongly indicate that the majority of people disagree with you.
If you want to see how much value there is in Apple's phones, look at the used phone market. The competition isn't even close and iphones hold their value much better than the vast majority of android phones.
Are you sure its really the exception? I had an S6 that still functions really well with minimal battery degredation. I used it really heavily until I upgraded to an S9+, which is still going strong with pretty heavy use.
I've used apple products too, but it sounds to me like the differences in quality are deeply exaggerated. I happen to like android mostly because I have access to the filesystem and like to tinker with settings (and I like using my headphone jack).
As far as aftermarket value, I'm not convinced the used marked is completely rational... Or rather, there are plenty of confounding factors that make that a poor argument for which phone is built better.
yes, your phone is the exception. There are numerically more exceptions because of the sheer number of android models out there but phones lasting longer than two or three years is the exception. You can see this on the estimated OS charts if you combine it with the knowledge that most android phones don't receive more than one OS update. I've had several android phones over the years and know several others who owned them as well. Both in developed and developing markets. Android phones are cheap and will suffer on two counts - software and hardware longevity.
The used market may not be totally rational but there's a good case to be made for why apple devices tend to hold their value better - they are often built better. You cannot simply dismiss the higher price of used apple hardware as the market being irrational.
Even my coworker had been using an S6 until a couple months ago when he jumped to a pixel. I've known multiple people who were using S5s until at least last year.
So my personal experience makes me doubt that my phones are some kind of exception. These things seem to be plenty durable enough to last several years. I think there's not as much difference in hardware and software as you'd like to think.
If you want to make definitive statements, then I have to ask for your data.
Some basic searching I've done unearthed a paper[1] in the
Journal of Industrial Ecology[2] that concludes that economic lifespan (how long a phone is actually used and thus depreciation rates) is only marginally effected by the functional durability (including hardware and software quality). Instead, they suggest that lifespan is more effected by brand equity and related intangibles. People choose to use certain products longer regardless of whether other products have similar functional qualities.
Thinking further on what could cause intangible factors to have such a large impact on the secondary market and depreciation, I can't help but wonder if each brand is attracting different kinds of people with commensurately different attitudes towards their smartphones. That certainly could drive a difference in behavior, and could even be a self-reinforcing trend where the users more likely to retain their products longer are drawn to the brand with the users who are more likely to retain their products longer.
This would mean that the S5's and S6's I've been talking about aren't the exception to the trend. Their users are the exception. That's something I'd be happy to accept. There definitely is a difference in behavior between iphone and android users.
P.S. it's worth noting that the paper itself was seeking to determine if repairability would significantly increase the economic lifespan of smartphones. That's why they were looking at what factors caused people to use their phones for longer or shorter periods of time.
You can supplement this with the OS share stats of android phone and combine it with the safe assumption that the majority of android phones are lucky to see one OS update. Consumentenbond in the netherlands estimated an average life of around 2.5 years. This is their source Android: beperkt houdbaar. Digitaal Gids
Add to this the resale value number.
I think you're making this more complicated that it needs to be. Android phones don't retain value as well because support is poor. There are few Samsung shops you can walk into to get OEM support and samsung is king of the android hill. Same with google and their name is behind the OS. Apple meanwhile, support six year old phones with software updates and even replace batteries inexpensively.
The point i was aiming for was that android phones aren't any less durable than apple's phones. They aren't used as long and this establishes a feedback loop where android OEMs must cut corners to maintain margins on devices simply because there isn't a revenue stream once sold.
End of the day, your old android phone working well is the exception. Apple know that what sells is the appearance of speed. That is a major reason why their phones sell, not because of GHz or GB or Megapixels.
> your old android phone working well is the exception
[citation needed]
This isn't supported at all by the article you linked. It's your own hypothesis, and I simply can't find any basis for it.
The peer reviewed article I linked explicitly shows that behavior (like how long a phone gets used for) is being driven by primarily nontangibles like brand equity rather than hardware and software durability.
The fact that you're ignoring that and still pushing your hypothesis makes it feel like you're clinging to Apple for some reason. I've never understood this kind of brand loyalty. I've stated a couple reasons for my decision to use android, but I'm not attached to Samsung, and I'm even thinking of picking up one of Sony's new phones. Hell, I've used Apple phones in the past, and even tried a Windows phone for a while (that tile interface they had was excellent BTW)
The problem is that doesn't entirely work for trans women. Hormone therapy during their transition will reduce their performance to the point where they mostly can't be competitive with cis men anymore, while they'll still dominate against cis women.
Everyone's relative chromosome string should be determined, like XXY and that should be the category, devoid of any loaded words like "man" or "woman". If you're XY, you don't get to got against XX athletes, regardless of the identity of anyone involved.
