to be pissed off with the assumption that we all have fucking iPhones?!

[Bogeyface]

Some of us cant afford them, some of us prefer android, some of us just (shock horror) want to call and text so dont need a smart phone at all!

So why is all the latest tech geared towards a phone that is outsold by android phones 5 to 1?! Surely it makes more sense for business to use the Android platform on the basis that so many more people use it than to narrow their market to iphone users only?

I bank with Natwest, I would like to be able to use my phone to pay for things in the event that I have forgotten my purse, but I cant because I choose to use an Android phone.

This is leaving aside the whole thing about why iphones are seen as so wonderful. I used one for a while, they are counter intuitive and obscenely expensive. I will stick with Samsung Galaxy thank you!

I've heard about rooting before - has anyone got a simple how-to? My ancient Android tablet's not had an update in ages and getting v creaky...

not the point, you don't expect to pay for something & then have it become useless after a couple of months.

Hardly. You bought it to work with a particular phone, and then it didn't work with another phone. It still works, doesn't it?

In other news, the roof bars I bought for my Golf didn't fit my Passat, and I can't get my CD player to take cassette tapes.

I recently bought a new phone, a Nokia Lumia something or other running Windows 8.1 Mobile. It's bloody wonderful. All contacts were transferred from my 4 yr old Nokia (running Symbian 40) via Bluetooth, and it just does everything I need it to. It remembers wifi passwords, switching from my myfi personal wifi hotspot to wifi automatically without me having to set that up, the tile system on the front page is easy to customise so your most used apps are opened with a tap on the screen, you can have multiple apps open and switch between them, I could go on but won't.

But if they force Win10 on me I'll wipe it and install something like firefox OS.

greatbigwho that's true, when I'm working on my Android app I have to test it on a variety of devices before I can release it, from a tiny phone to a massive tablet.

Indole it's probably not vanilla Android but I've got a motorola g 4g and I'm very happy with it. It's cheap and the battery lasts (for me) about three days! I used to have a nexus and the battery would barely last a day.

they are counter intuitive

They really aren't.

If you're struggling to set up an iPhone then I have a 10 year old that can do it for you.

Perhaps that will be my Dragons Den / internet millions money-making scheme.

I think Apple are the best because they invented it. They came up with the iPod, smartphone, tablet etc. and everyone else is just following on. And some of those products are as good as or better in some areas, worse in others. But at the end of the day, Apple are always going to lead.

I'm conflicted. I used Android for years but recently switched to an iPhone and I love it. So much easier, syncs with my iPad. However we have an iMac and I hate it. Give me a Windows PC any day.

Apple didn't invent much at all Boyscout - they redesigned and popularised a lot of things they didn't actually invent (and having invented something doesn't mean you remain market leader for long necessarily anyway... )

Things Apple Didn't Invent

YANBU but I started using a iPhone a few months ago and it does seem a lot more efficient and easy to use. It's personal preference though isn't it.

DrDre, three days is amazing!

they redesigned and popularised a lot of things they didn't actually invent

Most notably, of course, the graphic interface for computers, which came lock, stock and barrel from the Xerox Alto research machines and their Xerox Star commercial (in the sense of "were on sale" rather than "anyone bought them") cousins. Jobs just took a trip up Sand Hill Road to PARC and looked at the stuff everyone was talking about, but was a bit more commercially astute. When the Mac (and around the same time the Lisa) shipped the technology was pretty widely used: you could buy a Windows/Icons/Mouse interface from any and all of the workstation vendors (Sun, Apollo, Daisy, VAXstation arm of DEC, whatever HP were selling in that space that week before they bought and killed Apollo, etc, etc) but it was fantastically more expensive and often involved a large desk-side unit; Apple's masterstroke was to make the Mac affordable and plausible on a standard desk.

I have an iPhone 5. I bought it second hand a year ago for under £100 and have a sim-only contract. If you don't care about having the newest model iPhones are affordable.

I don't necessarily think iPhones are better than android but they better meet my needs so when I update I will go for another (second hand) iPhone.

I think people's choice of phone is up to them but I sometimes wonder at some of my friends who have expensive smart phones but barely use any of the features. I've had friends who didn't know they could access the Internet and who hadn't set their phones up to receive emails. That seems a bit daft.

I know I don't use all my iPhone features but I try to - I use Siri all the time (not now as I'm on the train in the quiet coach and I don't won't any threads being started about me ). I love reminders especially location based reminders - I use them all the time.
For exampl, I owe my friend some money so asked Siri to remind me next time I go to her house. Its brilliant. I know other phones do the same thing but I find it easy on my iPhone.
baabaa

Boyscout, if anything, Apple came up with idea of applying design to technology, and then hired some, a maybe just one, very very good designers. Suddenly computers were displayed instead of just being hideous things no one looked at, and hid under the desk. It went from there.

They didn't invent the tech, they made a WYSIWYG interface, which Microsoft, some years later, produced a version of called Windows. I remember testing that system for the company I worked for at the time. It was cobbled onto the normal DOS platform, and was a bit clunky and nothing like as pretty as the Mac interface.

Apple have (or had) good designers. That's where their strength lay, and why initially, most design firms used Macs. And Quark, and Photoshop, not to mention Illustrator (shudder).

I bank with Natwest, I would like to be able to use my phone to pay for things in the event that I have forgotten my purse, but I cant because I choose to use an Android phone.

Does Android have the ability to make payments?

It's certainly true that Apple have the world's best track record at reinvention: they have often come in second or later to a technology and fixed the implementation issues so that it integrates seamlessly with the device and creates and addresses new jobs-to-be-done. The mouse, trackpad, touchscreen, mobile phone, TouchID are all good examples of this.

However, it's important to understand that reinvention is an innovative process. In many ways, having the idea is the easy bit: "a touchscreen!" Building a working version that you can sell is much harder: MP3 players were plentiful before the iPod and were all pretty rubbish. Understanding how users are being failed by current technology implementations, and inventing the technology to fix those issues, is really really really hard. And it generally involves inventing completely new methods of doing stuff, and the mouse, trackpad, touchscreen, mobile phone and TouchID are all good examples of this too.

What Apple doesn't do:

• Try to be first-in-class with a technology for the sake of being first-in-class
• Fundamental research, eg the radio tech that underlies mobile phone comms

What Apple does do:

• Try to be best-in-class with a technology to provide delightful (their word) solutions to user's problems
• Applied research, eg capacitative touchscreens to build an iPhone

However, it's important to understand that reinvention is an innovative process.

Absolutely. The notorious Slashdot review of the iPod No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. is instructive: at the time, the iPod played into a space occupied by geek products aimed at geeks, and the geeks certainly got it very wrong (comments include "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.") One might also mention Steve Ballmer's take on the iPhone ("There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance") which gives a clue as to why Microsoft is doing so much better now he's gone. Apple's talent lies in taking other people's technology and making it more usable, nicer to look at, easier to get going, better integrated and slicker. And in doing that, they make saleable things that at the time look too niche.

It's like buying HiFi. You could solder it together yourself and get exactly the stuff you want and a risk of burns and mains shocks if you get too close. You could buy complex separates with lots of cables which involves turning six knobs to get The Archers. Or you could buy a B&O thing which is 90% of the performance for 250% of the money but works instantly, has only a few controls and looks nice in your living room. Apple are happy to hoover up that latter market, and if you want some home-made lash-up or a Richer Sounds confection of boxes, they're happy to say "fine, you do that".

I'm not sure what the people that complain about Apple are complaining about. Apple aren't large enough to have market dominance in any segment, or anything remotely close to it. If you don't want to buy Apple's products, no-one is forcing you, and there's no market where you're even under heavy pressure. In general terms, people buy Apple kit of their own free will. If you want to buy something else, great? So what's it to you?

I swore blind I would never buy an iPhone. After numerous issues with various android phones (including the Galaxy s5) I realised the only reliable tech I my house is a first gen ipad2. Bought an iPhone and would not go back now. It just works.

I was Android, switched to iPhone as everyone raved about them,and hated it. Waited out my contract and am happily back to Android with a device that doesn't link itself to every other bloody thing in the house so everyone gets everyone else's messages. Dd2 got a new iPhone 6 two weeks ago. Took it out of her bag and screen is cracked! I would never have another one but then I'm not super tekky so don't need a lot of the stuff/Apps etc. Prefer my Android tablet too.

I like my iPhone. It's useful and most people I know have iPhones so it's easy for someone to help me if I don't know how to do something. I also got it because so many things are compatible with it. I want to be using a popular/common product for ease and convenience. Eg if I go to someone's house and my phone is out of gas, it's likely they'll have the appropriate charger. If that makes me a sheep, then fine. I think it actually makes me practical.

I have just got back in from the repair shop. Dd had a mishap with her Nokia Lumia and the screen smashed. Yes it was an almighty mishap to smash that screen (it involved another child and a very excited dog ). I got the quote for the repair, as I am not in the UK I will convert so it was around 27 pounds to repair. While I was there a man came in with smashed screen of iPhone 4, so really not a new one by any means. Quote for that - 70 pounds!!

OTOH I got water damage in my iPhone 5. Took it to Apple and they couldn't fix it. They charged me £100 and gave me a brand new phone.

Their customer service has always been fantastic.

I didn't have cover and the damage was totally my fault, they could have easily have charged me for a full price handset.

They came up with the iPod, smartphone, tablet etc. and everyone else is just following on No they didn't....I saw that someone else posted the link that I was going to post, so won't repeat it...

with a device that doesn't link itself to every other bloody thing in the house so everyone gets everyone else's messages.

What, like other 3 iPhones and 4 iPads in my house...? No problems here whatsoever and they are all linked to the same Apple ID too.

Dd2 got a new iPhone 6 two weeks ago. Took it out of her bag and screen is cracked!

All the tales about smashed screens are purely down to bad luck. I have seen just as many smashed or cracked android screens. This is probably the kiss of death (hastily touches wood) but none of our family Apple devices have ever had screen damage. DS2 confessed to dropping his iPhone, with no phone case, from about waist height onto a paved floor the other day. I also dropped a fork prong first onto my iPad not so long ago too.