“I want to put a ding in the Universe,” Steve Jobs once said. Seeing as it’s nearly impossible to sit through an entire class without hearing someone’s iPhone ding, I’d say he was pretty successful. At Cornell and in the world at large, we seem to live in a world of iPhones and Macs. So what happens when you don’t have an iPhone? These are some of the difficulties of going against the current.
1Limited apps
Navigating the App Store can be such a struggle for non-iPhone users. There are certain games and apps that are only available in the Apple store. Often, apps are in the Apple store before they’re in Google Play. Even if apps are available on both, they look different depending on which app store you use, which can be kind of annoying.
2No FaceTime
People with iPhones are used to being able to use FaceTime to video chat. Of course, Facetime is only on Apple devices. A lot of people aren’t going to download Google Hangout or Skype if most of their friends are on Facetime. And, let’s face it: Facetime has infinitely better video quality than other video chatting apps.
3iMessage
Again, another feature only available for Apple products. iMessage makes communication a lot faster, and people like being able to use read receipts so that they can see when you receive or view their message. For some reason, people with iPhones get really annoyed when they get green messages while texting Android users.
4Group Chats
Group chats pose a similar threat because of the iMessage issue, making chatting with multiple friends at once really difficult. Chances are you’ve encountered the situation where you’ve been added to group chat and all of a sudden someone asks, “Wait…who doesn’t have an iPhone?” because the group got messed up. It is this kind of inconvenience that probably explains how GroupMe got so popular.
5Emojis
A lot of smartphones have far fewer emojis than Apple products. How many times has someone sent you an emoji and all you can see is a box with a giant X in the middle? It’s hard to interpret a text correctly if you don’t know which emoji they sent, but it’s super awkward when you have to ask. Emojis also look different depending on what phone you have, which can result in some confusing conversations.
6Phone Cases
There’s a clear discrimination when it comes to the variety of phone cases available. For iPhones, it seems as if the options are endless. They always have the largest selection in the stores and come in every brand, color, or customization under the sun. Other smart phones, in contrast, don’t have nearly as many options and cute cases are few and far between.
7Chargers
iPhones have to be special, so naturally they have their own charger. If you don’t have an iPhone and your phone is dying, it can be pretty difficult to find other people with a charger you can use. You wouldn’t think it’d be so hard to find a USB–the U literally stands for “universal”–but when everyone has an iPhone, it kind of loses its meaning.
8Camera
Whenever you hand your phone to someone to take a picture for you, they look at your camera like it’s a foreign object. Then they press the button and genuinely have no idea if the picture took. People are so used to iPhones that they actually have no idea how to use anything else.
9Your Phone Might Blow Up
If you don’t have an iPhone, your phone might blow up. As in literally burst into flames. Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7 hoping to compete with the iPhone and win over Apple users. It was a huge fail. As you probably know by now, the phones started catching fire, and 2.5 million people had to give back their phones.
Some people don’t really like iPhones and chose not to get one. iPhones definitely aren’t perfect, but unfortunately so many people have them that it’s almost inconvenient not to. Apple hasn’t taken over this campus–it’s taken over the world. But even despite these inconveniences, I’m not going Apple any time soon.
