"Everyone wants iPhones"

Anyone is free to "want" anything. But they need to be rich to actually afford it.

Also, I think it's a HN bubble thing to think that the vast majority of iPhone users know or care about Apple's fine-tuned App Store-related extortion or their privacy promises.

In fact until recently Apple had made it literally a bannable offence on the App Store to EVEN INFORM PEOPLE that Apple was taking a cut of their money.

FB collected money through their apps for charity fundraisers and Apple not only wanted 30% of that, but they refused to let FB EVEN INFORM their customers that this was happening.

I am sorry for using all caps but if you seriously do not see how insane this is becoming, we are operating on very different axioms.

Apple makes good hardware and decent software and has managed to maintain a patina of luxury and class and 'high society' for all these years, yes. Completely agreed.

Side note: I don't want an iPhone and have in 20 years of adult life never paid for an Apple product.

  > Rich people? Everyone wants iPhones, they are by far the best smartphones.

Why do people think this? I've been using a Samsung Note with the Wacom stylus for over a decade. Every now and then I try an iPhone and the experience is good, but not great. The UI noticeably lags on any iPhone over a year old. The keyboard is annoying and lacks features I use, and third party keyboards don't integrate properly. No consistent back button behaviour, it's up to apps to implement and each does it differently. There is no way to sync the calendar or contacts with Webdav, not even with third party apps. So far as I know, there is no ADB equivalent.

Other than the phenomenal camera, which I think the newer Samsung S-series phones with the stylus match, I fail to see the appeal of the iPhone. Well, it is an appealing device, but not the "best" device for many workflows.

I don't. And I don't actually know many people with iPhones apart from my parents who've been buying everything Apple releases since the nineties.

There seems to be a big difference between the US and the EU here.

(FWIW, I love MacBooks, but in my opinion iOS is just subpar.)

By worldwide standards you need to be rich. Even a cheap second hand iPhone is a months wages in some countries.

I quite like Apple hardware -- and indeed I'm typing this on a (second-hand) Macbook. I'd prefer not to have to use their software though, thank you very much. The good news is that Firefox works on pretty much everything that's not an iPhone or iPad.

Widespread malware isn't a thing on Android. But you lost me already at "iPhones are by far the best Smartphones" They are so crippled, I couldn't imagine using one

Many people, sure. But not everyone. I tried iPhone for some years but went back to Android. There were just too many random arbitrary restrictions for me.

Best experience? Lol, nope.