102 PCWorld MARCH 2020FEATURE I SWITCHED FROM ANDROID TO iPHONE
into one screen on the far left. It’s also
frustrating that every app I install ends up on
the home screen, forcing me to obsessively
organize this ever-expanding list of icons if I
ever want to find anything. During these
frequent reorganizations, the launcher has a
maddening habit of assuming I want to make
a folder when I hover over an icon for even a
fraction of a second anywhere near another
icon. The process is so tedious, I avoided
installing apps I didn’t absolutely need.
Default apps: Try as you might, you will
never escape Apple’s default apps on the
iPhone. You can install different browsers, email
clients, and so on, but they’ll be treated like
second-class apps on Apple’s platform. For
example, URLs will always open in Safari. If
someone sends you an address, it’ll open in
Apple Maps. Apple grudgingly added supportfor third-party keyboards a few versions back,
but they don’t have the same level of system
integration as Apple’s keyboard. The iPhone
also likes to re-enable the default Apple
keyboard at seemingly random intervals. The
default app situation is a huge pain, especially if
you’ve grown accustomed to choosing your
defaults on Android.
No always-on display: Apple was late
to the game with OLED screen technology,
and it’s missing one of the key benefits now
that it does use them. Most Android phones
have support for an always-on display feature,
sometimes called an ambient display. This
allows you to see notifications and other
information at a glance, and it doesn’t drain
the battery much because black OLED pixels
use no power. Apple doesn’t have anything
like this, and the iPhone wakes up the full
panel when you get
notifications. It’s
just a waste.
Notifications:
Apple had just
implemented push
notifications when I
ditched the iPhone
years ago. Today,
Apple has a
notification center
that looks a bit like
Android’s, but the
similarities are only
Apple’s insistence on pushing default apps is downright annoying. skin-deep. The