Mark Saltzman gets us up to date with all things tech. At this time of the day and week.
Day and week, the machines are getting smarter. This is tech Talk, brought to you by Skynet.
Well, it's something we all go through in our lives. We know at least somebody who when you text them, it's the green bubble, isn't it? Absolute iPhone or Android? Which is the best mark. You know, you're going to piss off a lot of people.
You can't win this argument.
You cannot.
Well, you're you're probably one of those rare individuals who has tested.
He probably has one of both, hundreds of probably one of both.
Right, Yeah, I'm a dual wheelder. Yeah, it's just you know, it's occupational hazard. I have to use both iPhone and Android to review apps.
Yeah, well, thank you.
And then and then you have all those burner phones, of course I do.
Actually, there's a burner app that's great really both Android and iPhone. It's called text Now. It's free t e X T n OW one word and you choose what city you want to look like you're from. You could say La or wherever, and it'll give you an available area code and it'll ring just differently on your existing phone. You don't need a separate phone, and you can call and text as if you had another phone.
You just helped so many people commit crimes and affairs.
It can be used for legit purposes.
Let's say you're going on okay, you're set up on, you go on a date through a dating platform, and you don't want to give out your real work and they could they could turn out to be a creepy. Or you're selling something on Craigslist or I don't know, Facebook, Marketplace, and you don't want to give out your real info. You have a fake number that you choose until you gain trust with the person your dating.
One of my girlfriends she had somebody tried to open up a bank account and her name, and she on the group chat she asked our single girlfriend, how do I get a burner number again? And she I think sends something to this effect exactly.
I used to have an iPod in high school and the way to get around not having.
A cell phone was to use text. Now, Oh awesome, yeah, great hack. Yeah.
If you had an iPod Touch, which doesn't need a cellular connection as long as you have Wi Fi, you can make calls over well, you can do that over what's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, great, all right.
So when it comes down to it iPhone or Android.
All right, So yeah, I open up that can of worms in a recent article looking at a very subjective look at different categories and who's the winner for each and then I know it's kind of lame, but I didn't come up with a conclusive winner at the end, but I did think that I gave the reader enough info to make a decision. So ease of use iPhone.
Android's getting better and iPhone's getting more difficult over time as it's adding new features, which I welcome, but it is a little more difficult to use generally an Android than it is iPhone. So iPhone wins in the ease of use. You're buying a phone for your ninety five year old Ma or granddad iPhone. There are exceptions, but that's my two cents. For cost Android, you know, iPhones are even the least expensive iPhone, They're not. They're not
cheap as Android. On the other hand, for under one hundred dollars, you can get a decent, not great, but a decent Android phone or you know, I'm talking about like a Moto G Play or a Samsung Galaxy A series phone not S series. So hundred bucks for an Android that is going to be good enough for most people out there. Form factors, as in what the choices you've got for how your phone looks and operates, Android is the winner because iPhone only comes in one basic
rectangular or candy bar shape they call it. Whereas Android you can get phones that flip, that that open up to become a tablet like they fold.
There's more sized.
Options because Android, you know there, iPhone are the only folks who Apple are the only people who make iPhone, and so you're limited in what you can buy. Android is open to everyone else, so you've got a lot more selection, and so in price and in form factors, Android wins there. For photos, I say it's a tie because yes, iPhone, especially the sixteen Pro, and it is as good as the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five Ultra or the Pixel nine Pro, which are Android based.
So it really, it really is.
A tie because both the high end Androids and the high end iPhones are great. Video calling. iPhone FaceTime is just easier and smoother, more intuitive, I think than Google Meet or other platforms like Zoom works on both, but natively, I think FaceTime is just the easiest you can get.
And can't I use FaceTime with others now.
You can, but it's not so graceful.
You get a link like if you're on Windows or Android, there's a way to FaceTime with I Phone people, but it's almost as if Apple was forced and they probably were by the EU to make it work, but it just doesn't work that great. So yes, thank you Gary that I that FaceTime is still the best experience between Apple devices. And then finally, security is I would say Apple still with Android, when you install an app, you don't get prompted do you want it to track you?
Whereas iPhone for the last three years. Now, if you install an Apple I'll say ask do not to track? Do not track and you can say yes, and then the app that you're installing they won't know where you were before or after you use the app. But Android it's a little bit more difficult to install. Better cybersecurity. Apple just I think they have your back. There's things I don't like about Apple, but definitely I think they take privacy and security a little bit more seriously overall
than Android. And it's easier to control because it's just one company that makes that phone where you know, but you got that walled garden, right, You can't download apps from other app stores easily on iPhone. They want you to stay in the ecosystem. What is the market share between the two? So iPhone is number one in the US, but worldwide, Android is number one. So yeah, in the West where there's money, so Canada, US, Mexico, and the UK,
iPhone is number one. Virtually every other country Android is number one. So market share worldwide it still goes to Android, but there's also a lot more Android phones because it's open to multiple companies. But yeah, you can't touch Apple in the US. They're just by far the number one phone maker. But people have money. They have a thousand dollars generally speaking, Let it not be lost that we
also like things that are dumb. I mean, we like the things that are the easiest to use in many cases.
We ran out of time, but I wanted to talk to you about your iPhone spying on you. Maybe we can do that next week.
Yeah, I ad related issue.
Yeah, I was having a phone conversation with a friend and I said a phrase let's just say it was let it Go, something like that, let it Go. I repeated it, and then I got off the phone and I hit Spotify and I hit shuffle, and the son that came up was again, I don't remember exactly the phrase. It wasn't as trite. It wasn't as trite as let it Go. It was something a little bit more nuanced. But it played the song with that is the title, and I was like, what the hell?
That's a little sas says. The kids would say that is sus as hell.
And I've noticed that on my Spotify, you know, created for you podcast that comes out every Thursday or Tuesday or whatever where like things that I say, or things that I'm looking up or things it's it's it shows up in the titles of the songs that it's suggesting to me.
Well, chat next week. Yeah.
She was having a conversation about as a soda water that you wanted to buy with probiotics in it, and she mentioned the name of the company and it shook. The next ad she saw was that ad. So it's like a little too coincidental, but yeah, all right, well we'll put a pin in that for next week.
Talk to you then, Mark, have cheers bet Mark Saltzman there, of course, host of the Tech and Out podcast and an author of great articles when it comes to technology,