After switching away from GrapheneOS to iOS after RCS stopped working for me, I can safely say my experience has been the opposite. The camera is the only thing better for me on iOS - everything else is buggier and worse. A few of my favorites:
1. Safari is buggy as hell, and requires installing apps to run things like ad blockers.
2. The settings are ALL over the place and very hard to navigate
3. The gestures are clunky - often have to try a couple times to get one of the settings quick menus to drop down
4. Why is the date not displayed at the top of the screen with the time outside of the lock screen?
5. The pin unlock is horribly broken - I have to slow way down to use it compared to Android.
6. Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performance.
7. The handling of audio devices seems intentionally malicious - like if I call someone from my car through car play, it shouldn't send the audio out through the phone earpiece. If a call begins with phone earpiece audio and is underway, it shouldn't switch several seconds in to bluetooth headset half a house.
RCS can be hit or miss on GrapheneOS, but they have made significant progress recently. It requires using Google Messages rather than any other messaging app, and may require enabling an ICC authentication option that is disabled by default. And it may depend on your carrier. RCS is kind of a pain in the butt but the messaging improvements over SMS are substantial which is why I wanted it.
When I first tried last fall I had it working for a few weeks then it stopped entirely delivering messages and I fell back to SMS only. After the recent system updates and enabling the ICC option it has been working well for me.
In the last week or so, multiple people have told me they cannot text me. I found that I was getting a "verification limit exceeded" error (perhaps because of my unusual behavior of usually being at work or at home, both which have known wifi networks, and sending maybe half a dozen texts any day?). I got the error to go away for half a day and they were still unable to message during that time, and now that I have it disabled I still appear as online on RCS (yet still unreachable?) so they still cannot message me lol.
I've been on the other end many times across multiple Android devices across multiple years, being able to send messages to some RCS users, being unable to send messages to other RCS users, not being able to receive messages in group chats entirely comprised of Android users, etc.
SMS/MMS: Handled by carriers, you can send messages to people who are offline and they'll get the messages when they turn their phone back on.
Telegram/FbMessenger/Whatsapp/etc: Handled by individual corporations, you can send messages to people who are offline and they'll get the messages when they turn their their device on.
RCS: Handled by both Google and carriers at the same time for some reason, maybe 80% chance of being able to send a message to somebody who's online, let alone offline.
I'm sure there are multiple reasons it was challenging, but Google and friends have not risen to the occasion at all. Truly a garbage protocol.
I've found that RCS works ok-ish on the Owner user, but doesn't work at all on any other (it appears as an empty message). Moving to the Owner account you can tap to redownload the message and then it appears correctly in all accounts. It's a mess that makes daily driving a secondary account not worth it
SMS is pretty horrible yes but I don't know anyone that uses it anymore. The only ones I get are spam from my phone provider and some MFA systems that are stuck in the past. Oh and the odd shipping notification.
RCS I didn't even bother to set up. I don't want to use yet another system. If people want to reach me they have WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to choose from.
If you don't want to invest in getting your contacts on Signal, you can try OpenBubbles. It gets iMessage on Android devices and works fine.
I highly recommend switching to GOS, it is wayyy better than iOS UX-wise and obviously better privsec and freedom.
One thing that I had to do when I first got GOS, to get a better experience, was find all the Open Source apps that I needed. Otherwise, it looks rather bland and the apps are mid. Once you find the right apps and launcher, everything works much better.
RCS is proprietary so it only works on GrapheneOS if you have Google's Messages app. At least, that was the case a year ago, but I'm assuming it hasn't changed.
On the bright side, Messages works without linking to a Google account
> Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performance
I hear this and wonder how much must be regional. I'm experiencing the opposite. Apple Maps has gotten quite good, while Google Maps seems to just be rotting away. Both do work reasonably well in my home area of the PNW, but Apple Maps is a bit more polished. But in some places, like recently when I was on a business trip in Austin, Google Maps was comically terrible at routing. I get that partly this is probably because Texas has interesting ideas about designing a road network, but still, Apple got it working just fine.
Same. Google Maps quality has gotten noticeably worse these past 2 years for me. It routinely tries to navigate me to making impossible turns or taking weird and sometimes more dangerous routes just to shave off a potential minute. I started using Apple Maps at the advice of a colleague and it’s given better directions. This is all local. I have no baseline comparison for using maps while on trips.
Fine, the whole post was explicitly "my experience" but I think it's a reasonable gripe - why is it not configurable, and why did it take me so long to sift through the impenetrable settings structure to figure out that it wasn't configurable?
Agree and many more. I had an iPhone 15 Pro for about six months last year and one of the most infuriating things was that you can't get to Camera settings from Camera, you have to go out to Settings.
That's a really rude and dismissive take - the impact of cars has been immense, in particular the ways in which they've been given primacy as a mode of transport and the ways in which that necessity has interacted with our laws and infrastructure development (sabotoging of public rail transport, parking regulations and the creation of car-dependent suburbia, pedestrian safety, highway projects decimating communities of color, etc. etc. etc.).
To blithely state that nobody could make such a claim seriously is an attitude which actually has a really fitting term: carbrained.
Yes. People don’t always frame it as “ooh, if only I could meet Mark Zuckerberg”, but most people IME are at least a little wistful about the kind of company where you’re on friendly terms with your CEO.
Is this a meaningful replacement for that? Probably not, but I’m not prepared to rule it out. Give 1 in 1000 Claudes a Zuckerberg persona and you’d get some chuckles out of it I bet.
Shouting that while traveling too fast is indeed incorrect, but a polite "on your left" or bell while traveling an appropriate speed is considered good behavior to avoid surprising pedestrians.
This again depends on the jurisdiction and kind of path you're on. Where I grew up, if it's not separated into bicyclist & pedestrian lanes, bikes yield to pedestrians.
On US forest trails, the general rule is bikes yield to pedestrians and everyone yields to horses.
(Obviously pedestrians walking in bicycle lanes are doing it wrong.)
Outside of some stage actors and drill sergeants, there are probably few people who can project their voices well enough that a vocal warning is useful.
You're either traveling slow enough that it's not necessary (and why yell at people if you have to?), or are too far away for someone to understand and get a bearing on who isn't already looking at you.
A bell is still rude in a shared space but used correctly, a decent one can at least be effective.
I just don't think that is even a little bit true, or at least it's something that is very culturally specific and thus not generally applicable.
I have a friendly sounding bell I use from an appropriate distance (and I can modulate the volume), and I routinely have people give a light wave to show they heard. In addition, the biggest complaint about cyclists in local social media is about them passing without notice.
If you just bell once or twice, and don't aggressively keep ringing, I'd never consider a bicycle bell in a shared space rude. I even consider it good manners, though as others have said, that varies between cultures.
Being visually impaired, though, I'm grateful for cyclists who use their bell. It's immediately clear. For some reason, my brain takes slightly longer to process someone yelling "on your left!" or similar, than just a quick "ring ring".
> Some cyclists ring their bells because they're worried a pedestrian might suddenly turn into their path,
This is wrong - on mixed use paths, it is customary and proper to announce "on your left" when passing, and a bell is a nice alternative. Even cycling slowly pedestrians can do some very erratic things, and moreover are very surprised when cyclists suddenly appear on their left (and may do something dumb in surprise!).
Announcing "on your left" is a great way for someone to move left, because more often than not, they're oblivious on the shared paths, and the spotlight effect messes with their head.
> This is wrong - on mixed use paths, it is customary and proper to announce "on your left" when passing
This is neither customarily nor regulatory uniform. There are mixed-use trails near me where bells are required. There are some trails where most people use a bell, some trails where nobody uses a bell, and some where there is a mix.
In my personal experience, the ratio of bikes to pedestrians and the purpose of the trail greatly affects how people tend to handle this.
On the bike trail it is crucial to do a shoulder check when changing lanes. Some people get "in the zone" and ignore all other traffic in the singular pursuit of the shortest times. They will get very very angry if you get in front of them, if they spot you at all instead of just slamming into your rear tire at full speed.
If a website disrespects "request desktop site" and still tries to force you into an app... ugh.
Had this happen yesterday when someone sent me a link to something on AllTrails. If the service was good and the website was usable, I might have even considered getting the app for offline features. Not anymore - screw companies that do this.
I described my own attitude, obviously companies are going to do what they want.
In this case, AllTrails has a perfectly functional website which they allow users to access from computer web browsers, but they force mobile phones (even when in "request desktop site" mode) to redirect to the app. If a site breaks in that mode it's on the user - I'm specifically requesting to get access to something they already provide and being denied.
This is especially egregious given how many "apps" are just websites in a wrapper anyway.
I think that sucks, and I'm entitled to my opinion. Now get off my lawn.
After switching away from GrapheneOS to iOS after RCS stopped working for me, I can safely say my experience has been the opposite. The camera is the only thing better for me on iOS - everything else is buggier and worse. A few of my favorites:
1. Safari is buggy as hell, and requires installing apps to run things like ad blockers.
2. The settings are ALL over the place and very hard to navigate
3. The gestures are clunky - often have to try a couple times to get one of the settings quick menus to drop down
4. Why is the date not displayed at the top of the screen with the time outside of the lock screen?
5. The pin unlock is horribly broken - I have to slow way down to use it compared to Android.
6. Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performance.
7. The handling of audio devices seems intentionally malicious - like if I call someone from my car through car play, it shouldn't send the audio out through the phone earpiece. If a call begins with phone earpiece audio and is underway, it shouldn't switch several seconds in to bluetooth headset half a house.
I'm going back for my next phone.
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