My first smartphone was an iPhone 4 — a well-crafted, great device, but one where software and customisation were limited. Jailbreaking iOS 4 was pretty much the only way I could make my phone work the way I wanted it to.

To this day, my jailbroken iPhone 4 was one of the greatest phones I’ve ever used. My killer feature: having my calendars and todo list (via 2do) on my lock screen. All my classes and tasks were available at a glance at anytime. No fiddling with unlocking and tapping on apps or anything!

My gripe with Apple at the time was how precious they were (are) with their walled garden. It felt like my device wasn’t really mine, and frankly I found this attitude of theirs pretty arrogant. In retrospect I’ve come to understand where they’re coming from: to deliver the best experience for everybody requires extensive testing and a meticulously crafted strategy for managing the hardware and software. But of all things though, the thing that I found most irritating: not being able to place icons wherever I wanted on the Home Screen! It really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it’s such an inconsequential thing, it was baffling this wasn’t considered!

Then I discovered the open source philosophy. Android offered a more advanced and hands-on experience with phone software. Even stock android had support for different app launchers, widgets, and replacing default apps (Firefox and the unlock plugin are incredible!)

But I lost that killer feature of the organiser lockscreen on my previous phone. I tried to replace it with widgets, but it still just wasn’t quite the same

In the 15 years since, iOS has had tremendous updates! And google has consistently been declining from my good graces. From their unsatisfactory privacy stance, to their insistence on shoving AI without any way to opt out: I finally had it! I changed to Kagi search, and subscribed to proton. But I was still on android… who knows what other data is being funneled there. Apple has a stronger and clearer stance on privacy, maybe it’s time to given them another go, and see how far they’ve come.

I bought a second hand iPhone 13 from eBay, with the intent this would be a short trial period where I try and fail to adapt to the iPhone as my daily driver. But after setting up this device, the plan had changed dramatically within the day: I’ve switched to it permanently

Migrating from android to iOS was surprisingly seamless. And to my surprise: all of my previous gripes seem to have been addressed

• App icons anywhere on the Home Screen
• Change default web browser and many other apps
• Widgets are now on the Home Screen, and can be viewed from the lock screen

And so, my organisation lock screen was back in full force — without keeping up with the jailbreaking arms race!

Apples design, while it’s not perfect, seems to make settings easy to navigate and play with. And with how intuitive the interface is, I’ve had a surprising number of moments where I think “I wonder if I can do X?”, then amazed to see that I can do X with my first guess!

It’s such a pleasant experience to use, and I’m amazed how many papercuts I forgot about from android once I migrated. Fifteen years later, I’m glad I gave the walled garden another chance.