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(reposting because new thread)
Is Twitter finally dead yet?
Usually, I'd be the last person to ask such a provocative question. I used to be one of the people who rolled their eyes or otherwise ignored sensationalized media stories surrounding Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter, stories which have plagued the news cycle for the better part of almost a year now. It felt like you couldn't go a day or two without an article on the most mundane of things that were only remarkable because of Musk, like him going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
But I have to - reluctantly - admit, maybe all the media's negative hype had a point.
The latest decision Musk has made is to rebrand Twitter to "X". The URL X.com will automatically redirect Twitter. Twitter is changing its logo from the iconic blue bird into a white "X". Apparently a tweet should now just be called an "X".
The obvious question is: Why? Musk's answer seems to be that he wants to change Twitter into some sort of "super-app" where one can do everything on it, similar to the WeChat app in China. This only raises further questions, like why people couldn't just use other apps, or why it had to be done in this why, or why they couldn't even just go the Meta approach where the company is renamed X (in fact, it's already been "X Corp." for a while) but Twitter gets to still be named Twitter and keep the blue bird logo.
The one thing that everyone in the Musk-Twitter discourse seems to agree on is that Twitter has significant value in its brand. Now, it might not even have that. Who really wants to talk about "'X'-ing on X" when it's far more idiosyncratic to say "tweeting on Twitter", which people have done for the better part of the decade?
But to answer my own question: No, I think it's the wrong approach to look at each change as potentially an outright Twitter-killer. I think the bigger picture should be looked at, and that in the long run, the demise of Twitter will be a death by a thousand paper cuts, where each change isn't quite so negative to kill it entirely, but it keeps Twitter on a downwards and downwards trend. And there's already been several paper cuts - fleeing advertisers, ratelimits, restricted guest browsing, etc.
A Western ‘Super App’ is ridiculous because of the reason why Asian Super App exist.
In simple terms, they exist because of the various shitty semi-stock versions of Android that dominate the smartphone market in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and pretty much the rest of Southeast Asia. There are few standardized apps, and for a long time Android Pay didn’t really exist or work. In these markets the Super App serves as a one stop launcher for payments, chat, online shopping, taxis and so on.
In America, the iPhone serves as the ‘super app’. It has messages (iMessage), payments (Apple Pay) and various other integrated services, and through notifications and cross-app integration accessing third party apps like banking and Uber is easy, with shared single sign on and payment via iPhone password or FaceID.
Super Apps evolved to fill a software gap that doesn’t exist in the USA, at least not anymore.
And is it not good for the consumer that ** the 'super app' is going to have competition now ? **
My heart bleeds for Apple users. Every time I am forced to use an Iphone - which is every time my boomer doctor father has some problem he can't figure out, I feel like screaming. It's like if someone took an Android phone and lobotomized it.
First time a few years back I found myself in utter disbelief when told the Iphone does not have a file system. There's no simple way for apps to share files.
Why people pay for these abominations is quite unclear. Fashion ? Don't know any better ?
Well… to establish my bonafides I’m a Linux user personally and professionally, but there are some very obvious reasons to use iPhone over Android. One is quality. There’s simply no comparison in build quality from basically any android phone to an iPhone. Second is updates. My iPhone will get quick software updates years and years past the end of (slow and unpredictable) support for most android phones. Third is usability. iPhones are much more usable than any Android I’ve had out of the box. Apple Pay is great. iMessage is great, the camera is great.
I understand the desire to tinker on your devices, I truly do, but the iPhone is superior on basically every metric except tinkering, which means it’s better for almost everyone.
I suspect you're probably only ever seeing cheapest Chinese android phones because in the US Apple has a lock on the market. Comparing between the Motorolas and Iphones my parents use, there's no noticeable difference in build quality.
The only difference is that the Iphone has far, far fewer features, although that might be due to the model perhaps ?
I mean I've owned many Androids over the years... HTC Magic, Samsung Galaxy, Droids, OnePluses... None of them really had the build quality of an iPhone.
What features is the iPhone missing, other than the ability to install software outside of the app store?
It's like Android but worse and crippled in odd ways.
For example, recently saw someone bitch about how hard it is to get a ringtone into it.](https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1683202524789239808) and list some familiar software relatedsounding BS.
https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1684272662485295104
https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1684273095169789953
As a mature human male, this seems like a trivial complaint.
Trivial or not, it's worse re: apps and it's more expensive and the money goes to people who hate me.
Staying with Android is really a no brainer.
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Also a linux user. Samsung's Galaxy S series is generally the same or even better build quality than an IPhone and these days gets functionality updates for at least 4 years plus security updates for a few years after that point, and they come out pretty quickly too once the Android version is officially released.
Maybe Samsung has actually figured out the software updates, but a few years ago they had not.
Samsung is probably closest to Apple in terms of build quality.
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But they’re very expensive even compared to iPhones, or at least the flip versions are.
My other concern is privacy, or such remnants of it that remain. As far as I’m aware Apple is (mostly) content to make money from the hardware and the App Store and actually implemented pretty good privacy features, whereas android is riddled with Google spyware. Or is that not the case anymore?
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