This is a small step in installing an app, but a giant leap for digital freedom. I hope that non-UE citizens can achieve this goal by the end of the decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
Its hard only because greedy corporation execs decided to milk its userbase dry, while giving them massive FU in the face coupled with a tasty spit. Technically, they already done it without breaking a sweat.
But amount of pass apple gets from mostly US folks even here on HN and elsewhere, despite all their intentional missteps and fuckups is staggering. Main reason for me to stay away from whole ecosystem, price wise they are just in upper middle tier, functionality wise it depends what you need/expect - from great to pretty much horrible proposition. If google would be chinese corp I would get it when crowds get into us-vs-them mindset, but this fanatism has no base in reality, its more like blind political support of candidate X despite massive character flaws, just because you already invested yourself heavily in given party direction for topic Y.
They will keep doing it exactly and only to the point when users will start voting with their wallets, hoping for some apple moral auto-correction is a pipe dream with some serious stuff in that pipe. Or leave it up to regulators with some morals, but I struggle to imagine this working anywhere else outside of EU, and I am not positive about the future change (hoping to be wrong of course). Until apple does something both nasty and visible, they will continue to be uncritically celebrated.
Well if you look at the uBlock Origin comment thread that I started on this article, someone told me you can have that on iOS in theory. Turns out they were just assuming as well.
I've installed every update and I've never had an issue. I don't use iOS much, but I don't think I've ever seen a bug. I have seen some weird behaviour, but that could just be me mostly using Android and not knowing how iOS does things.
uBO already runs on iOS. Orion is compatible with Firefox and Chrome extensions. The lack of extensions in mobile browsers is a sign of Mozilla's decay, not a sign of Apple being unnecessarily restrictive. They also don't care about you having extensions on Android; their most recent redesign left Android Firefox users without extensions for months.
Mozilla is an ad-supported company from every angle: Pocket, search deal, the ads built into Firefox. Why don't they get more of the blame for the current state of the browser ecosystem?
You can install ublock origin but it doesn’t actually do anything on Orion on iOS. I tested it not too long ago, maybe things have changed but Orion still uses WebKit and iOSes APIs. I have heard Orion’s default ad blocker isn’t bad though.
Chrome on Android doesn't support browser extensions. Google is an advertising company. They are not incentivized to allow extensions. Extensions block their ads, and are a risk vector for mobile users, who are often young, inexperienced, and running outdated systems software.
> What's Orion
A web browser, using the same Webkit as everybody else on iOS, with support for browser extensions.
People give Apple too much flak for the mismanagement or warped incentives of browser vendors. Lack of extensions in existing browsers isn't their fault to any degree.
> and is it compatible with normal desktop Firefox and Chrome extensions, or with the mobile ones?
There's not a separate spec for "mobile" Firefox extensions and desktop browser extensions. Google WebExtensions. It's an open standard that desktop Firefox follows and that Chrome almost does.
It obviously can. My first sentence was "uBO already runs on iOS." You asked if Orion was compatible with "normal desktop Firefox and Chrome extensions." There's no distinction between desktop Firefox extensions and mobile ones! Addons on both are just standard WebExtensions, and I've already noted that it runs both Chrome and Firefox extensions.
Your lack of understanding of what browser extensions are is exactly why it would be better if Apple explicitly banned browser extensions from the App Store. Ignorance is a malware vector, and even you, a commentator on Hacker News, do not understand the browser extension ecosystem. Instead, they're taking a bunch of flak for something they aren't even doing, all the while iOS has had a browser supporting uBO for years.
"I noticed similar issues. I think the reason is that Orion on iOS supports fewer Web Extension APIs than it does on desktop (see the list below). As far as I know, uBlock Origin makes heavy use of the webRequest API, and this seems to be mostly unsupported on iOS. So I decided for me to use uBlock Origin only with the Mac version and rely on Orion’s built-in content blocking on iOS."
"When using the uBlock Origin browser extension on iPhone or iPad, it is unable to block any ads or trackers on webpages. The displayed interception count always remains at 0. This result is consistent whether downloading the version from Chrome or Firefox's software store."
Sounds like from that (may be out of date, some posts complaining are 15 days ago though), it runs but doesn't work:
Caveating a few things: Firefox nightly works pretty much just as well and as stably as the regular build and brings back extensions. Months ago they did something with PDFs that made them ridiculously slow, and nightly for some reason doesn't let me open PDFs in other apps like stable does. But the combo works for me. I agree that this is Mozilla's fault, though. Until most websites stopped working (how is beyond me but for example github wouldn't let me click links) I used the last version before the redesign
> WebKit is crippled and always behind in standards implementations.
I would cry a river except the standards you're mentioning are mostly made to benefit Google. At best we'll get a duopoly instead of a monopoly, like we have with the actual phone operating systems.
It's crippled in ways beyond standards implementations. WebKit can't use more than 500mb per tab in iOs and third party browsers are not allowed to use full screen mode. This is to prevent actual web apps from being viable.
> I would cry a river except the standards you're mentioning are mostly made to benefit Google
This mindset makes 0 sense. Yes, things like http/3 and webtransport benefit google, but it also benefits literally everyone else not named Apple.
Benefits javascript developers? I'm writing rust and compiling to webassembly.
> I see zero benefit for the users
You seem to think that all the web apps that exist would just be native apps if the web didn't support js. Your way of thinking reeks of 4chan/g from 2005. Next you are going to start complaining about "bloat".
Also fyi, people that create things tend to be users of their own creations.
Also, I'm done talking to you because it seems like you are here to troll and just argue in bad faith. I need to learn to identify people that like to shift goalposts faster.
I hope people care more about the things you value than your apparent lack of care of others.
I haven’t looked into the issue at all, so can you tell me what is wrong with the current content-blocking features in mobile safari that prevent ublock origin from working? AdGuard works fine, but that in itself doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Bizarre how the scare popup doesn't have a button to immediately go to the right place in Settings (or even just enable the feature right there). Typical Apple though. It's the same mess on macOS to allow running software installed from the web.
On the one hand I agree that it's a bit silly that the messaging isn't clear. On the other hand, from my experience with Android installation, providing easy steps for end users who don't know what they're agreeing with leads to lots of malware and other nasty stuff.
Android has recently started blocking users from granting some sensitive permissions to apps from settings dialogues spawned by the app itself for this reason. You need to manually open the settings to grant the most sensitive permissions. This has the benefit of requiring the user to know what power they're granting these apps, but the process is a lot less straight-forward than this was on iOS.
The problem here (in the malware case) is that the user is not reading or understanding the warnings. Making it harder for the user to do what he wants is not the right solution, apple should focus on making sure the user knows what he wants: the warning should be clearer or more explicit. Otherwise apple is penalising everyone that knows what they’re doing, it makes gamers angry, it’s just a bad look.
Unfortunately, it's somewhat common among the less tech-savvy.
In countries where Android is more popular, a lot of scam callers call to tell you that your phone has a virus and to install their "special app", of course the special app needs to check that there's no virus hiding in the camera so it needs camera permissions, of course it's safe if it has made-by-the-police in the name. People who don't know how tech works absolutely fall for this.
Eeehh, conveniently, this is consistent with their other “scare popups” that don’t directly harm their business model like installing provisioning profiles. They’re installed via Safari, where a pop up tells you the instructions to go to in Settings, rather than a button to take you there.
Yeah, even more so when you then open the Settings app and it immediately greets you with a bespoke "install Epic Store" button. So there is an actual install flow going on in the background, in which Safari communicates with Settings, it's just specifically designed so you have to look up and open the Settings app yourself, instead of just opening it for you.
Reminds me of the ridiculous hoops Google built into Chrome to discourage you from sideloading extensions - having you activate "dev mode" before, sure, but then also making dragging and dropping the extension file onto the Chrome window the only way to actually install it.
This brings the app to your apps settings page which includes the permissions toggles. We use it in our camera app when the user has denied camera permissions (kind of vital) and need help turning it back on, it brings them right to the correct toggle
What a wonderful example of malicious compliance. Honestly wish this got the treatment that third party app stores should be just as straightforward to get and use as the native one. Clearly Apple won't do this unless legally enforced.
One of the first times I visited it I was on mobile data with like 300mb high speed data left. After opening the page and reading the article I got the notification that I have no data left.
I don't know if it was actually Ars that munched on my data or if it was something in the background suddenly doing that, but it didn't happen before. Ever since then my taste of the website has been a bit soured.
> I was on mobile data with like 300mb high speed data left. After opening the page and reading the article I got the notification that I have no data left.
That's the reason I configured uBlock Origin on my phone browser to disable both images and JavaScript. Text-only pages have a much lower chance of eating all the data, and if I really need JavaScript or images for a site, I can easily tell uBlock Origin to temporarily unblock them for that site.
Enabling "automatically use reader mode on all websites" has cut down on the amount of noise I see on many websites. It's made a few sites usable on mobile again for me. I don't have hard data but I assume the amount of downloading is reduced as well since the page rarely renders an ad but usually keeps the actual pictures you want to see.
This being Epic and made because of a free to play game, I'm more interested in an analysis of how predatory it is. It's not like Epic is better than Apple at their core.
While some people are talking about whether this is a good or bad regulation, the reality is we've moved to another game entirely : whether or not Apple has to follow the law.
No matter what you think about the regulation, it's obvious Apple cannot in any way be allowed to win that one now.
At least in the common charger case it was an industry agreement not a law and they did it when the regulation came, this time it's much more serious.
meh. if it's about shipping broken e2e or reporting vulnerable minorities or the usual, then they would be obliged to break it and/or exit the given market.
yes, I (also) think the EU pro-consumer regulations are good and Apple ought to adhere to them simply because it's the virtuous behavior, but ... they have show time after time that they prefer (virtually amoral) profit maximization.
The question wasn't "is it dead" but "will it recover"? And sadly I think not.
I'm certainly not going to buy ports of years old games on the app store where they're expensive and mac exclusive when i can get them multiplatform and for much less on Steam - if I haven't already finished them years ago. <cough> Death Stranding lol. I preordered that on launch.
And I use one x86 box, one PS5 and two Macs. I'm just not uninformed enough to overpay Cook for games.
Does that 2.08% Linux include the Deck btw? I couldn't figure it out by expanding.
The 2.08% cover all Linux users: Deck and non-Deck users. You have to check distro details for the breakdown. SteamOS Holo (Deck distro) is 40.97% of the Linux users.
The Deck shows up as "Steam OS Holo". Which is 41% of the Linux category (or 0.85%
overall). For whatever reason Valve never updated the combined view to show Steam OS Holo.
I wonder if I'm counted once, thrice or four times. I've ran Steam at least once on both windows and linux on the x86 box and on both macs...
Edit to answer the reply below this one:
I have no idea how many times I got the hardware survey popup, but I always click Yes on it. It's possible I wasn't counted for Linux because I don't really use that install. The x86 box is headless and I steam stream games off it to the macs that have monitors. That doesn't seem to work from Linux.
Unless things have changed, the survey is opt-in and thus it's a statistical sampling. Over the many, many years[0] that I've run Steam, I've gotten the survey pop-up maybe 4-5 times, although I'm not a heavy gamer so Steam isn't installed and running all the time.
A good start would be to support some existing API (Vulcan and OpenGL) instead of making their own (Metal).
Or throw in the towel and do what Linux gaming did and just make a compatibility layer for Windows APIs and DirectX (wine/proton). Though this compatibility layer stuff has big issues with anti cheat software making it not really suitable for many online games.
Games written with Vulkan can run on MacOS with the help of the MoltenVK [1]. You don't need to rewrite the game, just recompile for MacOS. The game can use Vulkan API but loads the MoltenVK shared library at runtime. It acts as a translation layer for Metal which is very similar to Vulkan. There are some gotchas, such as you can not use geometry shaders because Metal does not support them.
> You don't need to rewrite the game, just recompile for MacOS.
The word "just" does a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence. First you need to get your game running on ARM64, which likely won't work out-of-the-box unless you already ported to smartphone/Nintendo Switch. Then you simply map all the functionality to MacOS syscalls, debug a second version of your game, polish it, and release it but without Metal support so you can use MoltenVK to run it. The number of video games that fall into this category of "released for 64-bit MacOS but doesn't support Metal" is minuscule. 99% of the video games released today are an x86 Windows binary, and if you can't run that you're boned. Developers will not build you a special MacOS version of their Vulkan game so you can mess around with translation layers.
You could also use Linux and get upstream Vulkan drivers that work out-of-the-box. Apple's obsession over Metal is part of the reason I left MacOS and I truly pity anyone that depends on MoltenVK to run their favorite software.
Yeah the fact that you have to compile a separate binary is already too much work for most developers. Just not worth the effort for less then 2% market share.
I’m impressed by how well semi-recent games run on my M3 Macbook using GPTK and Rosetta through Whisky. (30-60fps on high settings at the native ~2k resolution.) Apple could turn the Mac into a truly great gaming platform if they had a team dedicated to building and maintaining something akin to Proton. Alas…
Well, that’s kind of my point. I can eventually run most games, but there’s a lot of hacky, manual work involved. The Steam Deck is a massive success, I think, because Valve puts in a ton of effort under the hood to ensure that most arbitrary games “just work” and that everything is wrapped up in a lovely and functional user interface.
Also, at least for now, I get the impression that the GPTK (and Rosetta, for that matter) are meant to be temporary shims that will go away in the future.
I question the accuracy of those statistics. I’m one of the few people who game on macOS and almost exclusively use Steam via CrossOver, so I wouldn’t be included in that 1.37%. The same was true before the Apple Silicon era when I used Boot Camp.
And there is Steam on Desktop. You buy a game once you can play it on every platform with Steam which is all the platforms. If you buy a game in the App Store, you're stuck to places Apple likes.
Explaining in detail, since there's a lot of misinfo in this subthread.
The new georestricted iOS features, like 3rd-party App Stores, are behind feature flags that only activate in certain regions. There are multiple factors taken into account when determining whether a flag should be activated. They include GPS location, location obtained from nearby cell towers, the issuing country of your SIM card, the region you set in settings, the country that nearby WiFi networks broadcast for regulatory purposes[1], and (indirectly, through the billing address) the issuing country of the credit or debit card that you use in the App Store.
Not all of them have to match, but the threshold is high enough that you're very unlikely to meet it while physically in the US.
Feature flags stay activated for 30 days since last eligibility, so if you're an EU resident and leave for a vacation, you're fine. If you traveled here as an US resident, you (probably) could get these features activated, perhaps needing an european Apple ID and/or SIM, but they would only stay on for 30 days.
> They include GPS location, location obtained from nearby cell towers, the issuing country of your SIM card, the region you set in settings, the country that nearby WiFi networks broadcast for regulatory purposes[1], and (indirectly, through the billing address) the issuing country of the credit or debit card that you use in the App Store.
GDPR applies if your an EU citizen even if _none_ of these is true. I hope the EU emends their markets law so that it grants every EU citizen the right to _easily_ install whatever he or she wants. That would put an end to this nonsense.
Last I checked, all app store regional limitations etc were tied to your billing address. Similarly, you only see apps that are only available in your region based on your billing address.
Without being specific to this law when you visit a country you follow the laws of that country and hit your home country's. In this case it would mean that apple is not obligated to offer you access to alternative stores while visiting US.
They’re still iOS apps executed in the same sandbox and notarized by Apple. It’s not like they can suddenly read more data from your device just because you downloaded the binary from Epic’s S3 bucket instead of Apple’s S3 bucket.
Of course Apple would like you to have a vague feeling of fear, uncertainty and doubt about third party distribution. The truth is that the only extra layer of defense provided by Apple’s App Store is an arbitrary review process that is always overwhelmed and easily gamed.
The ease with which Apple's rules may be circumvented is situation-specific, e.g. Facebook ran an ad campaign to protest against Apple enforcing privacy rules which (to my not legally trained eye) seem to have already been a legal requirement for app developers in several jurisdictions before Apple made it also a contractual obligation: https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2021/03/29/the-privacy-war...
So, for Meta, in this specific case, the law was easier to ignore than the developer agreement.
Facebook also uses the iOS Keychain to track you across app installs and deletions, AND even when restoring iCloud backups on a new phone! There's no way to see or delete that data without using Facebook apps, and no way to be sure that the data they show is all the data they've stored on your phone.
Unlike the developer agreement, the law didn't require the consent pop up to have any specific wording, and the wording that Apple requires is far scarier than it should be.
The sandbox does not prevent iOS apps from accessing private APIs and accessing data from the OS that wouldn't be available typically. And after all these years there is still no way to curtail the power of Objective-C dynamic dispatch.
It is one of the main things that the App Store process checks for.
> The sandbox does not prevent iOS apps from accessing private APIs and accessing data from the OS that wouldn't be available typically.
That sounds like a critical failure of the iOS security model that would make me uneasy about using their OS. A security issue like this needs be addressed through technical means, not by a fallible manual review process.
As things stand, it's just a fear-mongering excuse they can throw in front of clueless legislators/regulators to help them maintain a stranglehold on app distribution.
Another bonus if you use AltStore - you don't have to install an app from a company that defrauds children with in-app coin purchases to unlock stuff in their games... it's funny how Epic is now portrayed as 'the good guys'.
Apple doesn't itself make those games, it simply offers a marketplace and takes an obscene 30% cut of all the horribly addictive games.
The companies that make those games, like Epic and miHoYo are far more directly culpable.
Really, I blame the governments for not banning this obviously deleterious crap, like the US is seriously debating banning tik-tok when gacha games are right there.
Epic hasn’t made gambling games for years fwiw. Although they do serve them on their app store. Imo Apple would have banned these games a long time ago if it were not for the fact that it granted them hundreds of millions of dollars. The incentives are bad.
Everything always boils down to the terrible incentives of app makers paying a tax share of revenue or profit rather than just paying a fixed fee for the distribution service.
Because the only competition is Android. Apple is the least bad choice if we're talking quality of the user experience. Don't bother comparing specs on paper, use both. And that's even before we take into account that Android is run by an advertising company.
Can't decide if it's sad or funny that Epic's greed clashed with Apple's greed and they ended up getting EU users a bit more freedom to decide what's run on the hardware they paid for...
> Can't decide if it's sad or funny that Epic's greed clashed with Apple's greed
I think it's amusing, it's extremely rare for incentives of a big corporation to align with ours to the point where they'd go to war against giants like Apple.
Epic is equally bad in other areas but I'm glad they fought for this.
When considering competition for X, the alternative should do at least most of the things that X does. It's not realistic to expect a drop-in alternative, but the user, I think, can't be expected to turn their life around, just to use the alternative, either. If this would be the case, then a SIM-enabled Windows notebook would also be competition for the iPhone.
If the offerings differ too much, then they are not competition. They are different products.
> If this would be the case, then a SIM-enabled Windows notebook would also be competition for the iPhone.
Can that SIM-enabled Windows notebook do phone calls using the cell operator network (that is, not over the Internet)? If not (that is, if it uses the SIM only for data), then it's not an iPhone competitor. The "smartphone" category (which is where all iPhone competitors reside) requires being both "smart" (that is, with PDA functionality) and being a "phone"; the Librem 5 (and, for instance, the Nokia N900) fits comfortably in that category.
Nowadays, and especially for those under about 30, phone calls come near-last on the list of things smartphones are used for.
To change to the Librem 5, I would need to:
- change the way I communicate with all of my friends and family by using SMS over the _only_ method used in much of the world - WhatsApp.
- be excluded from context surrounding many social gatherings due to not being in group chats.
- change the way I travel with very, very different navigation apps that lack turn-by-turn directions.
- stop using social media when on the go - mobile websites often lack many features, if they even exist.
- accept significantly reduced quality photographs of memories, especially in low light.
- meticulously acquire local files for tens of thousands of songs I have organised in Spotify playlists for over a decade, and totally change the way I discover new music.
- lose Shazam and apps like it, so I’ll forever be wondering “what was that song I liked…?”
- entirely change from the mobile-only bank that I use (and, even then, suffer the atrocious UX of most online banking).
- change from the convenience of Apple/Google/etc. photos to setting up Syncthing, my own NAS, and making sure it keeps running and never goes wrong.
- become stranded when public transport stops running at night, as I can’t get an Uber, or try to get a normal
taxi at 3am. I’m not even sure they exist where I am.
- carry a wallet, or at the very least my cards, with me for the first time in 9 years.
Unfortunately, the duopoly is well-entrenched, especially for those born after 1995 or so and outside the US (SMS is very, very rarely used in much of the rest of the world). You could tell people that there are plenty of workarounds - I listed many above - and some sacrifices to use a Linux phone, they should try it! But then they would ask “why?” and you’d be hard-pressed to give any reason they care about.
I need to try Waydroid. So far, my Android emulation experience was done via KVM + Android x86, but unfortunately many apps need arm things, and the last release is like 4 years old now, which is ancient in smartphone terms. Thanks for the recommendation.
I looked into what this is, and I don’t think I could use my mobile banking apps, my payment cards or software required for work on this. Otherwise I like the idea and I hope it will mature and become a real option one day.
For some banks, Waydroid allows to run the banking app. If your bank forces you into the duopoly without giving a choice, you should complain or switch.
I like Linux phones but it's hard to justify spending $700 on any portable computer, especially one with only 3gb of ram.
I think for most people there really isn't any competition, especially with the lock in from icloud. It was painful for me when I switched to a pinephone (I just use cheogram on a laptop with a 4g modem now, I don't think most people will do that) and I'm generally very careful about using online services like that. Most people just switching between Android and iOS will turn their whole lives upside down.
I used to not understand this as well. Then I switched to Android after some 8 years and can't really remember why I "needed" iOS. Everything works and I am happy. really just choose the better product (for you). Regulation may not happen in time or at all but declining sales will make any business do an about turn at record pace. And even if it doesn't, why do I care?
Because I have this Android phone sitting on my desk for development. When I bought it it was almost as responsive as iPhones (and much cheaper). 4 years later the UI is a lagfest [1].
Meanwhile, my iPhone XS is over 5 years old and almost as responsive as on day one. And I have major version OS updates to blame for the "almost", while the Android one got one major update and was lagfest even before that.
[1] I don't even use it every day, Android development is kind of a side job once in a while.
> You change your phone every year? Because I have this Android phone sitting on my desk for development. When I bought it it was almost as responsive as iPhones (and much cheaper). 4 years later the UI is a lagfest [1].
As a counter anecdotal evidence: I bought my current Android phone before the pandemic started (that is, more than 4 years ago), use it daily, and it's as responsive now as it was when I first used it. While I don't have any iPhone experience to compare, I feel no lag when using it.
Same here, I have a Samsung XCover Pro bought 4+ years ago that still feels the same as when I got it. The only thing notable is the lack of 5G support, but it's only when I switch between it and my work phone (which has 5G) that I really notice the browser loading times.
I seriously don't understand why performance should degrade so much in time. Do they use crap flash chips in the cheaper models and Android writes so much to them that they run out of scratch space or something?
My family uses Android exclusively (including extended family) and the only cases where performance degraded is with very cheap 10+ y/o phones that could no longer keep up with system updates that now take most of the storage space.
Even those more or less still work after reflashing a leaner FLOSS ROM.
Did you perhaps buy a crapware chinese phone and are receiving bloat/spyware?
> Did you perhaps buy a crapware chinese phone and are receiving bloat/spyware?
No, this latest one is a crapware Samsung phone. Doesn't mean I'm not receiving bloat/spyware.
Come to think of it, the Huawei I used before this Samsung degraded less. But I had to abandon them when they got kicked out of google services. Need a full featured phone so I can develop whatever the customer wants.
Is it because you got used to it? Or maybe it JITs most-used applications? I don't think their experience is unique at all (I also have an Android device for development and it is a lagfest after a couple of years).
No, I know what you mean, I've seen this happen with very cheap (or not cheap but just rubbish/spyware) brands/models that quickly filled the system partition over time with bloatware during updates.
Being cheap, the system partition was already tight on purchase, so the bloat/spyware quickly turns it unusable. The cheaper models tend to have inadequate storage to begin with and install bloat/spyware to subsidize them.
I just don't think it's an "Android" thing, most of those can be revitalized by installing a custom ROM without the spyware (but the crappiest brands are probably not even FLOSS-supported).
Honestly it's been a while for me too and I don't even know how to see the actual device partitions instead of just mounts (e.g. I think in this case your / is just a read-only ramdisk so it doesn't really matter what df says... mine is 100% too.)
I don't even know how this works anymore since I think since Android 10 they use some sort of overlay FS for updates?
I tried installing parted on Termux but it refuses to do so and I have no energy to fight it.
I know it's cliché but... have you tried a factory reset?
> I know it's cliché but... have you tried a factory reset?
I will when it starts to annoy me.
Or I may just get a new phone the next time I need to do Android. This one has 12, they're at 15 now. I may need to be on whatever's the latest on a new project, whenever that comes (not soon).
I don't. I haven't experienved any lags. My mother has had a samsung m30 for a while and everytime I used it, it was absolutely fine. This was a 4.5 years old phone. I got her a samsung a35 this time.
Performances are better? They like the UI? They really wanted a smartwatch and Apple makes the nicest? Their family uses iMessage? They have a Mac and enjoy the integration?
There are plenty of reasons to have an iPhone even if you deeply dislike the lack of sideloading and the AppStore.
I'd rather suffer the Apple nanny state than the Google spyware empire. And the Google Material UI is eye-bleedingly terrible in its absolute blandness.
This is a small step in installing an app, but a giant leap for digital freedom. I hope that non-UE citizens can achieve this goal by the end of the decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.