> and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for them
So, not necessarily Androids, but whatever they happen to choose? I'm not sure what we're observing, that people just use whatever phone they prefer? Honestly, iPhones aren't a heck of a lot more expensive than a flagship Pixel phone, especially not for a multi-year tech investment. The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past. Usually people just want the CPU and GPU, if they're not older than about 4 years. The rest of the carcass just gets piled into an ever-growing closet stash of old PC components. If you have a Macbook on the other hand, you'll have a dozen people asking if it's still available every day until you sell it. Even if it's a relic, just with a working battery and hard drive.
My bias in this conversation is that I've owned an iPhone 12 since late 2020 with no signs of needing an upgrade anytime soon. I don't know anybody living in poverty but shoveling all of their money into Apple tech.
>The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past.
I think you're perceiving the same thing in both cases, but interpreting the data wrong re: PC hardware.
I just looked, the cheapest unlocked smart phone that Best Buy carries is $60. Yes, its pretty much garbage. But if you need to have a smart phone, and not much else, compare $60 to the cheapest iPhone ($430). So it goes with computers too. The floor on not Apple is quite a ways lower than the floor on Apple, even as the ceilings are pretty comparable. And what Apple is optimizing for is very different from what the average high-end PC manufacturer is optimizing for. When you do an oranges-to-oranges comparison of Macbooks and equivalent laptops, their prices end up pretty comparable.
Saying "iPhones are expensive" is very much akin to saying "the Mercedes G-Class is expensive". Its under-informed (as you say) only because a lot of people get iPhones (and Mercedes G-Classes) as status symbols, not for the innate capabilities.
Firstly, I just want to point out this is kind of a silly argument. A $300 difference in a multi-year investment for a device that drives the way people communicate, pay bills, and even entertain themselves is so negligible that it's not very much worth discussing.
But okay, that's cool and all, but you WILL need to refresh it 1.5x as often or more.. The Pixel 7a goes EoL on security patches in under 5 years. Meanwhile, Apple is still providing patches on iPhone 5 series products released 9 years ago, and latest iOS is available on iPhone models released almost 6 years ago.
Anyway, let's say none of that matters and that tech conservative people only hold their phones for 4 years anyway. An iPhone will hold its value better for that period of time, when you go to sell it on Craigslist. A 4 year old Google Pixel 3a XL can be bought for $72 on Swappa. An almost 5 year old iPhone XR is for sale for $195.
And that's not even to point out the iPhone SE as the other user did, which is cheaper than the Pixel 7a, though I think it would be a fair retort that the iPhone SE is more a competitor to the Pixel 6 generation. 6a being just a tad cheaper than the iPhone SE.
Thinking of tech as a multi-year investment makes the price differences negligible. It's really all about which garden you prefer to be in. Even if your credit sucks and you just need to pay cash for a phone, Swappa makes being in either garden so cheap that you hardly need to worry. And phones are so fast these days that exact tech specs hardly matter anymore unless you're big on mobile gaming.
So, not necessarily Androids, but whatever they happen to choose? I'm not sure what we're observing, that people just use whatever phone they prefer? Honestly, iPhones aren't a heck of a lot more expensive than a flagship Pixel phone, especially not for a multi-year tech investment. The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past. Usually people just want the CPU and GPU, if they're not older than about 4 years. The rest of the carcass just gets piled into an ever-growing closet stash of old PC components. If you have a Macbook on the other hand, you'll have a dozen people asking if it's still available every day until you sell it. Even if it's a relic, just with a working battery and hard drive.
My bias in this conversation is that I've owned an iPhone 12 since late 2020 with no signs of needing an upgrade anytime soon. I don't know anybody living in poverty but shoveling all of their money into Apple tech.