I'm an apple fan. I love my iPhone. I don't think I'm superior. Don't tar everyone with the same brush.

I can only assume these people aren't aware of androids capabilities. I admit average joe seems to think apple is THE best phone around. But anyone with an ounce of knowledge knows full well android is just as capable as the iPhone. In many cases, more so.

I also assume average joe, with no tech knowledge sees apple as a status symbol. So therefor wonder why you'd not go for one.

Quite often in my experience. I'm the only person I know with an iPhone. I always hear 'you could have got a better android for less'. Either that if I'm called an iSheep. Which amuses me when I'm the only person with an iPhone in a room full of people with android phones. Tell me again how not being one of the 20 people in the room with an android phone makes ME the sheep?

I think it's because Apple is a highly recognisable brand that people believe is of a high quality because of its marketing, while other devices running Android or Windows are from different branded companies who people don't perceive in the same way as these other companies don't advertise as effectively as Apple. It's like the whole Coke vs Pepsi thing, where people think Coke Cola is best when it's clearly not to a lot of people.

Mark

In the company I work for I can get statistics about who uses what, and in our case iPhone outnumbers android by 6:1 so here at least, well, bahhhhh

But how is that possible when android prophets to have 60% of market share?

In my friends/family I'm the only person with an iPhone.

Using something popular doesn't make you a sheep though

Blah blah blah. Same old same old.

In fact Apple does not make premium devices. They make devices and charge a premium for them. There is a difference you know. Premium design? The original iPhone was a great design but the 4 onwards, no.

The people who made the comments to the OP are, in his own words, no techies. They just do not know any better. In fact when I see someone with an iPhone I dismiss them as having any technological knowledge. This may be incorrect but the chances of meeting an iPhone user who knows what the f**k they are talking about are diminishingly small. Of course the vast majority of Android users are clueless as well (Samsung) but at least some of them are able to make an informed choice.

I have an iPhone but don't go around bragging about it. I have nothing against Android as I used it for years. I am quite interested in the HTC M8 at the moment. Also I don't care what phone others use and I'm sure they don't care what phone I use.

I recommended a Motorola G to someone the other day, they wanted a cheap SIM free smart phone to make use of a cracking SIM only deal they were getting from Virgin.

Someone interjected and said you don't want that rubbish, you want an iPhone, its got the cloud and everything.

Genius!

It is the only this with iCloud thankfully. I wouldn't want that opaque crap on my phone. I'd rather be able to check what i've actually backed up!

You assume by someone's phone choice that they know nothing about technology. How completely ignorant of you.

And people say apple users have a superiority complex.

I'm a Mac user with an Android phone and tablet. I tend to get lynched by Apple fanboys in Starbucks over it. They keep telling me "why didn't you get an iPhone/iPad?"and I always tell them that I prefer Android to iOS and it works for me and I also prefer the wider choice of hardware. It drives me mad! Why should one's choice of desktop/laptop computer influence what mobile operating system they use? I could understand if I was a Mac owner with a Windows phone but a Mac owner with an Android phone should be socially acceptable even in Starbucks!

Did you not read that properly? He said some android users are the same.

I was with you till the bit in bold

No. He said some android users are the same but at least some of them are able to make an informed choice.

Implying no iPhone user made an informed choice to purchase an iPhone. As though you couldn't possibly go with an iPhone over an android phone if you had any technical knowledge at all.

He said the "vast majority" didn't know, so the "some" who do should really be a few not some.
Whether there is much of a difference between the remainder after the "vast majority" is removed and for the iphone "diminishlngly small" remainder, I'm not sure.
I just took the post to mean there are few phone users of any type beyond forums such as this who have much technical knowledge of their devices.

Anecdotally, a colleague at work has a iphone which she considers superior to any other device. Then again, she bought a handbag for £500, so 'go figure' !

He inferred all Samsung owners so quite a few Android owners!

Indeed you are correct. Most people know nothing about phones. I can tell you which phone someone is using from a very quick glance and tell you how much ram it has , the screen resolution and size and for a lot of devices the battery capacity plus loads of other pointless shite Of course that is a really pointless thing to be able to do.

My point is if you see a middle aged person with an iPhone or a S3 mini then you know not to engage them in a conversation about their phone. But so what there are other things to talk about.

Go and ask people what Android version they are running and see how many know. In fact they don't even know what phone they have "its a Samsung Galaxy" yeah but which one. And look at how many threads the are on here about Sony Experia phones. It written your ****ing phone numpties and you see it every ****ing day.

Well so what most people just buy the phone they like the look of, have heard of and can afford. They couldn't care less about about the hardware specs which they don't understand or care about

Any smartphone these days will run the latest games, surf the web and take a reasonable snapshot photo which is all most people are interested in.

The thing Apple understood, and now the likes of Samsung is that the smart phone and then the iPad and tablets were ideal as consumer products to be sold like Game consoles or TVs and desirable home products, not extensions of their work life ( One reason why the windows tablets are not popular, I mean most people want to forget work when they are at home relaxing )

Actually your are misinformed about the middle aged and phones. Phone development is reminiscent of the old bedroom development of geeks writing stuff on their commodore 64 or amiga etc, who will be in their 40's and 50's now so there are plenty of 'born again' mobile phone developers in middle age.

Lets face it there are evangelicals on ALL sides of the fence, be that Windows Phone, iOS, Android and Blackberry. In fact I would go as far to argue that devoted fanboys on each platform are as much of a prick as each other. I have several devices from the above platforms and frankly view them no worse or better than each other. It is much of a muchness in how they are delivered, I don't take the view that me having an iPhone some how makes me superior to another person owning a Galaxy S5 or vice versa. If I am honest I have tended to find people are more negative to Windows Phone and Blackberry (the latter is understandable). The most popular platforms are more or less feature parity....personally I never understand why the devoted hate on each other when really what matters is advancement in software and technology,

Those tired points seem about as dated as the "XXXX will be the year of Linux on the desktop".

Mac isn't perfect by any means. But what it does still have are phenomenal developers who are passionate about building great new applications and experiences for the platform. And Apple is still very committed to working on OS X for traditional computing devices.

On the Windows side, it feels like almost everyone has given up on the desktop - probably (partially at least) courtesy of Microsoft's attitude of throwing everything at mobile with Windows 8/8.1. So now most of the masses of Windows software is either abandoned or receiving only lazy minor updates now. And all of what still works feels so tired, old and dated.

Of course you are right there are still important business applications that only run on Windows. It's also possible I'm so out of tune with Windows now that I'm missing all the great new desktop applications being pushed out. I'd be genuinely curious to hear about five amazing new apps or app updates in the past 18 months on Windows desktop that Mac users don't have.

To me it feels like Microsoft has given up on the consumer Windows desktop because it's a shrinking market. Consumer to Microsoft now means mobile devices. For business and enterprise desktop Windows remains alive and well.

The only question in my mind is how long does Apple persist with the Mac? Because I have no doubt it will be abandoned sooner or later. Right now the best justification for keeping it around is its the development environment for all the iOS developers out there. But from a pure financial perspective the Mac numbers are a tiny slice of the overall Apple pie.

For my 2p worth.....

I like to think I'm a kinda open minded person where tech is involved and have owned many android and iphone devices.

I do however swap to and fro like no tomorrow. However, for all my to'ing' to android I'm generally fro'ing' back to iPhones.

As a brand, Apple has it wrapped up. One company a few devices (talking iphone here) generally only 2 devices on sale at a time (currently 5s and 5c) eliminates the decision of what to buy if you are going down the Apple route.

For consumers, we can only talk in the majority, what the majority want, expect and really care about. Now Android is losing it's way slightly, in reference to the OP, what I hear in the scenario you mention is "why buy a Samsung" - not android, not a kitkat device not a google OS, but a brand. This goes back to the majority again, most people want simplicity, ease of use, minimal tech knowledge etc etc; they want to pick up a phone, open the box, charge it up and go, they don't want to know the intricacies of jailbreaks or titanium backups and modded kernels. Most don't know of evad3rs or XDA and will probably have no interest at either of those places.

Personally I believe Android will stay in the niche for some time yet, even Samsung are toying with Tizen OS, whilst it is greatly believed it is Samsung that have pushed android out to the masses via its 'S' and note lines. The world markets are so diverse, it's impossible to dominate everywhere. In the western world, we are more brand aware and style conscious (not me personally), we are the ideal Apple target audience, it's what we see and want to buy.

For instance an experience with my wife, uses her iphone 5 it fell in a mop bucket and died a death, walked in to an Apple store with the broken device, paid and excess of £45 and walks out with a refurb, however this is not what surprised her. On arrival back at home, plush the iphone in and eneters iphone password and voila everything is back the same as on her now broken iphone: apps, settings, photos, itunes purchases, everything. All this was done without her being aware or having to manually setup anything. This is what the 'majority' want.

When I had my Note 3 I had it configured to the gills with customer rom, kernel, viper audio and undervolted. This was great, a true tinkerers phone. But after a while I grew tired of maintaing everything, almost daily in some cases, and reverted back to a device that is more limited in functionality (but nothing essential and what I actually miss) but also much less hassle.

I do agree it is the Apple marketing machine that steam rolls and generates hype to the masses, but that is their success, and I'm sure that would love to be repeated by other device manufacturers such as samsung and Motorola et al.

In conclusion, just don't let it get to you. Pick a device and enjoy it you don't need acceptance from friends or salespeople. Same thing goes for Nike shoes, beats headphones, surface 3 (well perhaps not the latter ). Just do a bit of research yourself and pick what 'YOU' want and enjoy your choice, after all you can always change your mind

Of course I am not misinformed. I am middle aged myself. There are exceptions to the rule of course but that is the same for most things. Look at the popularity of IE, it still the most popular browser. You go round to a friends house and try and browse the web but IE will have so many toolbars installed the usable space is 2 inches.

I never said it was wrong or bad not to know about phones. It is in response to the OPs point. The vast majority know nothing about phones and can be ignored when the offer an opinion.

I don't think it was an Apple revelation to sell phones as consumer electronics. The phone market was pretty mature in 2007. They have been exceptionally successful at doing it though. Which IS what they are good at. They follow others innovation and package it up in a compelling way.

While custom updates/roms /on screen widgets countless ways to adjust various things etc may interest some most people just want, and will use something just as it is when it came out of the box.
Like it or not Apple have a pretty good integrated system as pointed out by catdogchicken.
You buy an iPhone and it works well straight out of the box, and is almost always well supported with software/Os updates for quite a time, as well as hardware support as mentioned above. How many shops/places are there where you will eb able to take a motorola Android device in and walk out with a re-furb/replacement as mentioned above by catdogchicken?

With most android devices to get the best from them you often need a custom rom, especialy if you want to keep it up to date with the latest software/android version after the device manufacturer has dropped the ( android ) device from its update schedule as they are on to the next big thing, or its too much work to add their skin/customisations to the device. and example of this would be the Samsung Galaxy S3, perfectly capable of running the latest android version, but once you add on samsungs own customisations it wont work, so as far as Samsung are concerned that device is staying on jelly bean.

I had Android phones forced upon me, by my employer.

The first Android phone I used was that awful Sony Xperia X10 (Aug 2010) Dreadful,
it felt like a beta test prototype, my previous phone had been a little K750, which had been brilliant. It took me all day to configure the X10, and it wasn't even intuitive
how to make calls. It had a mind of its own, and would often unlock the screen in my pocket and make phantom calls, texts, and delete its own widgets. There was a software update in Dec 2010, that actually killed the phone. I chucked the lump of shit in my drawer, and bought an unlocked Nokia C6 at my own expense. Really nice, ultra stable, and had a real slide out keyboard. However, it lasted just over a year, the ribbon cable for the keyboard fractured.

I went back to a company supplied phone, a Sony mk16 Android. That too had a slide out keyboard. A vast improvement on the X10, but far from perfect, it had its moments, and usually had to be rebooted daily. That lasted until I left the company in Sept last year. I went out an bought an iphone 5. Super stable, I've never needed to reboot (yet !). It's frustrating that the menu options are non customisable 'dead ends' but I can see the value if that for the mass market. I'm very happy with the phone, I might well go back to Android one day, but my 2 or so years with it wasn't happy.