Show them what you did. I bought an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
>> Yeah, and the worst part is the reason. For what? So Zoomer streamers wouldn't
make fun of you when you go to exchange contact information? >> That is not the only reason. It was the
biggest one. And [music] the worst part is he pulled the trigger on this thing
just 2 weeks before Google announced that Pixel phones will be supporting
AirDrop making it more convenient than ever to socialize cross-platform. Adding
insult to injury, just weeks later the Samsung tri-fold
that he waited 4 years for finally dropped. Dude, the look on your face was
Yeah. >> [laughter] >> That one. But as crazy as it sounds, I actually
don't regret my decision. [music] I know many of you out there may not love
Apple's business practices and to be fair, yeah, neither do I. But I find
myself really appreciating some of the quality of life features and I wanted to
give you guys my personal perspective on why the social aspects of the iPhone go
a lot deeper than bubble colors and why
it's going to be really hard for Android to win me back again even if I did buy
this like 1 month before my dream Android device was announced. Man, I
really did buy this at the worst time, didn't I? Yeah. But it's the best time
to segue Not quite. Oh. You could have done it in
August. >> [laughter] >> Oh. That would have been slightly worse. >> That's true.
But it's the best time to segue
to our sponsor. Acuity Scheduling. It's a flexible
scheduling software that offers calendar management, booking tools, client
communication, secure payments, custom branding and much more. Save 20% today
with our link below. No story is complete without the who, what, where,
when and why though. Let's talk about all of that just not in that order. See
you later. The TLDR is that I was looking for something fresher. My
OnePlus 11 was fine, but I really did miss being on something cutting edge
whether it was because of a better camera or even some fun gimmick like my
Fold 4 had. But the biggest thing that actually pushed me to iPhone was the
social experience. Last October, I got to go down to TwitchCon for the first
time. And as dumb as this is going to sound to many of you, my Android device
actually held back my networking efforts multiple times.
Oh, hey. I'd spark up a conversation. We'd talk about a collaborative effort
in the future. We'd hold out our phones to AirDrop, and I had to be the awkward,
"Hey, can you just actually type your number into my phone?"
Thanks. Well, no one refused to give me their number. I could immediately tell
though that I was kind of coming across as a bit of a burden.
Thanks. I did find some techy workarounds. I actually set my wallpaper
to my Discord QR code, but sometimes people had issues with that, too. QR
codes are a little less ubiquitous in North America. And let's face it, us
Zoomers aren't exactly known right now for being super tech-savvy. Of course,
that wasn't enough to convince me to join the herd. It was all of the other
boxes that Apple also ticked. This generation of iPhone, even Linus
admitted, is an incredibly complete package, pretty much top to bottom. So,
after that trip, I did it. I went out and bought this phone. And I was
actually so excited that I also picked up a Base 17 as a birthday present for
my wife to replace her aging 12 mini. Then I got home, grabbed some dinner,
and some hard-to-swallow pills. Cuz it took me, I kid you not, over 48 hours to
finally get this device fully set up.
And this is where the what comes in. Because I was constantly asking, "What
the is Apple doing?" Just like Linus, I struggled to get the Move to
iOS app to do anything. And it wasn't for a lack of trying. One time, my
Android overheated, and it shut down. Other times, it took so long that both
phones died mid-transfer. And then there was the time that it got stuck at the
1-minute remaining mark for several hours. When I complained about this on
Twitter, I had several people saying I was either fabricating this story for
clicks or this was a skill issue. Well, excuse me. All I did was follow
the app instructions and at the time, I had no intention on this being a video.
So, why would I fake this for my own personal device? I did get some helpful
comments saying, "It's just broken on certain flavors of Android." And
honestly, if that's the case, I get it. The fragmentation of the
Android ecosystem is one of the greatest weaknesses, which I'm going to get into
a little bit later. But, Apple should be the one telling me. If I open the app
and it knows that it might not work, Apple should pop up a little warning.
Eventually, I had to give up and set everything up manually, which took about
4 hours. But, it was kind of a blessing in disguise because during that time, I
started to understand where people are coming from when they speak so highly
about the iPhone. For starters, it's really easy on the eyes. And whether you
like it or not, the smooth transitions and the fun little animations that come
with liquid glass really do make the device feel luxurious, even if it can
make things take a little bit longer. The display is also incredible,
especially with how dim it can get for some bedtime doom scrolling. And the
battery has lasted me multiple days
multiple times. But, it charges so fast that I basically don't really think
about my battery during the work week when I can charge it in my car. Also,
despite what I have been told for years about Apple, the customization seems on
par or even better than some Android devices that I've used, which doesn't
mean it can do everything that Android can though. A big one is it can't side
load. I often hear people talk about how terrible it is that you can't do this on
Apple devices. But, then I realized I have never side loaded on Android.
I just haven't needed to. And while there are tons of great reasons to side
load something, not being able to has never held me back. And it probably
won't hold me back in the future. And I found the same thing was true for most
of the techy people in my life. So, I concede that it is a selling point for
Android, but I don't buy the narrative that not having it is a limitation of
Apple. The second big one is the keyboard. To put it simply, Apple has
the worst default keyboard I have ever used on a mobile phone. The amount of
wasted space that could have been used to have larger keys or more functions on
the top layer drives me nuts, and my Canadian homie Justin Bieber nailed this
one. The fact that they put the dictation key in the exact same spot as
the send button in a text message is downright unacceptable. I know it's such
a minor thing, but the amount of times that I have hit it by accident tells me
for certain that if anyone at Apple actually uses this keyboard, they must
know that this is a problem. And I know that I could probably download a
third-party keyboard to get some of the functionality I'm missing, but I never
felt like I needed to replace Gboard, so I think this is a fair criticism.
Another thing that drives me nuts is having three separate actions for
swiping down. The middle pulls down apps and search, top left handles
notifications, and top right brings down the control center. Really, you couldn't
have just like moved one of these to a swipe up function. And even more
annoyingly, if I swipe down the control center, I either have to swipe back up
in the top right, which is not ergonomic, or tap. And I'm sure I'm
going to start a firestorm here, but it's the one place in iOS where tap is
the gesture to go back instead of the other million back gestures that they
have. It's so confusing. On a brighter note, though, the camera is incredible.
This right here is why these phones
dominate and will continue to dominate the social media addicted teen
demographic. It's just easily the best camera I've ever used on a mobile
device, no question. There are things I don't like. The default camera app feels
too bare and not customizable and the camera button feels useless and I press
it on accident more times than I'd like to admit, but the third-party camera
apps unlock layers of compatibility for this thing that is just hard to compete
with. A huge part as to why the camera can be so much better on an iPhone is
simply down to how iOS interacts with the hardware and the very nature of
Android makes this kind of hard to replicate. Android is incredibly
versatile and works across thousands of devices. Maybe even tens of thousands of
different devices. But that means developers of each flavor need to work
on bridging the gap between the various physical camera integrations and
Android. This can lead to extra overhead, poor image processing, and
maybe most importantly, an extremely inconsistent look and feel across the
ecosystem. You can say Apple phones have good cameras, but you can't say with
certainty that Android phones have good cameras and I think that's a big
problem, especially when we go a layer deeper and look at how third-party apps
use the camera. A perfect example is this one. Compare these two Twitch
streams that I did when I was down in San Diego. On the left, you can see
Tubbo's POV where he is using his front-facing camera on his iPhone. It's
pretty clean, right? And on the right, you can see my rear-facing camera, which
in theory is a much better sensor than any selfie cam.
It's okay, especially for a couple year old device.
But my footage is the full quality file
that I downloaded off my phone and Tubbo's is after Twitch compression and
uploading it to YouTube. Somehow his still looks better even after passing
through multiple dog encoding steps and
this leads me to the biggest reason that I bought an iPhone. It's the social
experiences. You can say what you want about Apple's walled garden, but when
people have been fully converted to it, it truly feels like magic. Whether it's
the tapping to add people as contacts, seamless transition from AirPods to
speakerphone, sharing locations with friends in iMessage, going from phone
call to FaceTime in one button press without having to start a new call. And
of course, AirDrop. Stop, stop, stop right there. I know you are going to
fire up your fancy, resizable, superior
ducking keyboard and type, "But Android has Quick Share." Wait, wait, wait,
wait. The difference is how Apple treats AirDrop versus how Android handles Quick
Share. Quick Share is an afterthought, whereas Apple makes it a central part of
their platform. And this kind of awareness matters. Even decade-long
Android users will often struggle if I ask them to Quick Share a file with me.
Almost all Apple people I know can immediately find AirDrop. Another key
element of Apple's superior social experience is the apps. Brand new apps
will often launch exclusively on iPhone. And even for well-established apps,
iPhone users will often get new updates and features before the Android plebs. I
found this to be especially true for content creator-focused features. Linus
famously spent years calling out YouTube for supporting stories on iPhone, but
not on many Android devices. And Instagram has a feature called Trial
Reels, which allows you to post Reels to non-followers to get performance data
before you share it with your followers. That's been out for a year, but on my
OnePlus and even some Samsung devices still don't support that feature. I
could go on, and I could probably even go on for a whole separate video with
examples like that, but >> [music] >> I think what I've covered so far points
to one big question. Who is this device
for? And in my view, it's for two people. The first is the person who just
wants a phone. They don't care about side loading. They don't care that Apple
has them in a chokehold. They might even like it. I won't judge.
>> [laughter] >> We're all into some weird stuff. But when you look at it from that
perspective, it makes sense why Apple's keynotes focus on things like the
camera, the body, the colors, or even liquid glass, and leave only 30 seconds
to talk about real tech that matters, like how fast the USB-C port
can transfer data. The second is for people like me, a content creator. And
before you get mad, I'm not saying that content creators can't get their work
done on other devices. It's just that between the apps getting new features
first, sharing video files easily with AirDrop, tapping contacts quick meetup,
the iPhone prioritizes the features that people like me need it for. So then,
when am I going to be switching back to an Android?
To be honest, I don't think I ever will be. If anything, I'm actually kind of
upset that I put off on getting an iPhone for so long. The only thing that
might win me back is the Samsung tri-fold, which I finally got hands-on
with recently. And if Linus doesn't end up keeping it, maybe he'll let me do a
30-day review of it, and I'll tell you guys my thoughts. That might win me
back. But that's going to have to wait until I'm at least done telling you
about our sponsor, Acuity Scheduling. Do you ever feel like you're running all
over the place trying to keep up with scheduling things, and then having to do
the things that you're scheduled to do? Well, Acuity Scheduling can help get
your life organized by allowing clients to self-schedule, cancel, and rebook, so
you can focus on doing your actual work. They make it straightforward to sync
with multiple calendar apps, and you can set booking caps across all of them, so
you'll never double-book a client call and Friday night gaming with the boys.
And when you do go into those meetings, Acuity Scheduling will automatically get
you up to speed with notifications and relevant client history. You can also
integrate payment plans with services like Stripe, Square, or PayPal. You send
a contactless request for payment, no need to remind them in person. Again,
that means more time for gaming with the boys. Say goodbye to scheduling
headaches, and go to acuityscheduling.com/LTT
for a free trial, and use offer code ltt20 to save 20% off your first Acuity
Scheduling subscription. If you guys enjoyed this video, go watch Linus'
review of the iPhone 17 to see where we agree and where we disagree. All you
need to know is that I'm right, he's wrong. So, like the video.