About 12 weeks back, I bought my first iPhone; The iPhone 12.

Why did I buy it?

A mid-tier Android phone not only fulfils all of my requirements from a Smartphone but the lower price also allows me to use the phone carelessly and upgrade whenever I would want to.

iPhone 12 however is twice as expensive from a mid-tier android phone and yet I decided to buy it. Why was that?

I believe it was because of the following reasons:

  1. Curiosity: As a Software Engineer, I wanted to experience a new operating system.
  2. Tech Youtubers and General Public Forgiveness: iPhone’s display with a notch looks ancient compared to ANY android phone. Even the android phones which are 1/5th the price of an iPhone don’t suffer from the ugly notch. Yet, the iPhone is treated with a weird forgiveness from the entire market. I wanted to understand what’s driving this behaviour.

Impressions

iOS is an OKAY operating system with its own set of cons and pros.

Pros:

  1. Computational Photography: Taking pictures in any light condition is an extremely joyful experience with iOS.
  2. Consistent UI: All apps adhere to the same UI guidelines and the stock apps are excellent.

Cons:

  1. Persistent Notification: Notifications will not clear up until you open up the message / app. You can temporarily clear them but they will reappear again after some time.
  2. Photos App: The photos app has no concept of a folder, all the pictures I take or the memes I download end up going to the same album. This literally makes it unusable.

The Killer Feature

In a post apocalyptic world or in lockdowns, Android would be the most preferred OS. However, the iPhone’s real attraction is when you are in a social setting. Especially in India.
Not only strangers but even friends treat you better when you have an iPhone. It’s so weird and fascinating to see large scale marketing at work.

Here are a few examples which have stood out for me.

  1. Solo Travelling: It could be in my head but I felt like carrying an iPhone allowed me to enter higher end restaurants solo, without explaining myself.
  2. Work Parties: It’s easier to make friends with fellow iPhone owners.

And it looks like because of this killer feature, there’s an iPhone horde and because of the horde, the community (tech youtubers) promotes it despite the clear shortcomings, recruiting even more people in the horde and the cycle continues.

It’s quite impressive actually. Now while I am tempted to go back to my preferred Android phone i.e. Moto Edge 20, I guess I will still continue to use iOS atleast for a little longer. Cheers.