i hate current operating systems
It’s been 17 years, 9 months, 30 days since the first iPhone came out. Since then, Apple has enjoyed unprecedented profits and domination. Samsung has given pretty tough competition. A few smaller players like OnePlus came, created a following, and stayed stagnant. Chinese phones flooded markets in the SEA and MENA regions.
The past 18 years were also the golden age of Chinese manufacturing—they controlled and dictated the supply side of the most addictive hardware in human history.
In the end, they commoditized 90% of the hardware. I have never visited Shenzhen, but everyone who has visited said a small electronics shop can assemble your favourite iPhone with Android running on it at a fraction of the cost.
Today, 90–95% of smartphone consumers don’t decide based on hardware capabilities—that stopped in 2017. They decide based on the fact that they like Android or iOS.
Apple has been very successful in its ecosystem approach, which is largely how well the software is integrated between different hardware devices.
Google open-sourced Android, leading to massive adoption—almost all smartphone brands except Apple use Android as their OS.
But that’s all about to change with AI.
Sure, people are attempting new hardware designs—like glasses, modular laptops, foldable phones, etc. I’m not talking about that change. I’m talking about the change on the software, on the intelligence side of things.
Why was software so valuable? It’s because you can make the same piece of hardware do different things. Look at smartphone cameras—the hardware is almost the same, but whether you can do a 100x zoom or click a portrait is possible because of the software, more precisely, the OS.
Designed in California, assembled in China. Large teams sitting in Apple HQ used to design pixel by pixel, code line by line to build this valuable OS to delight the everyday consumer.
Well, as an everyday consumer, I’m not delighted anymore. I actually feel disgusted.
After using LLMs and agents, I think my iPhone, iWatch, and MacBook are pretty dumb—they still need a lot of button clicking.
I’m sick of only having portrait mode on my phone. I want a Lily mode where my camera notifies me every time there is a lily flowers because I love them.
I’m sick of telling Siri to wake me up at 9 AM and missing my morning meeting at 8 AM—I don’t want to end up blaming myself for making this mistake after a long day.
I’m sick of apps that optimize click-through rates and funnels. I would rather just say, I had a long day, gotta relax—the OS plays YouTube for 15 minutes, and orders my favourite snack from Swiggy using the best credit card offer because that’s what I do on a stressful day.
I want an OS that is fluidic and emergent,
- It lets me build my own apps that solve my own problems by enabling access to different hardware components.
- It understands my usage and behaviour to personalize the overall experience.
We are in the age of intelligence, but my photo gallery, files app, Siri, all of these are dumb af. And, somebody has gotta fix it!