Matisyahu's Blog

Well, it has been almost a month since I made a big change in terms of my lifestyle – my diet now consists of low carb meals, protein to keep my full and a good helping of vegetables. I wouldn’t say that I’ve become fixated about what I eat but rather I’m becoming more conscious of what I put in my mouth and by being my conscious I realised just how bad some food actually is – a plain blueberry muffin from my local coffee place has 65g of carbohydrates which is the equivalent of a whole main meal as a snack. Yeah, it was a shock but as my old man says, the longer you stick to it the more it becomes a routine to eventually it becomes muscle memory. Another benefit I find is that I am no longer tired all the time, the brain fog and lack of focus is going away which has helped with work – long story short, it’ll not only allow me to live longer but also a better quality of life.

Everything is going well with the Pixel 9 Pro XL – the January 2025 update came through, all installed and everything working perfectly. It is one of the reasons I was attracted to it because unlike other Android OEMs the updates are released monthly and they are actually made available on the month they’re for rather than the experience I had with Samsung where the November update wouldn’t be released until well into December (I thought it was the mobile phone carriers holding it up in New Zealand but when I reached out I find that in many cases they gave their approval one week (sometimes less) after receiving it from the vendor so ultimately it was the vendor holding it up).

Just on a side note, I was watching a video and although there were some legitimate criticisms that can be made of Apple I think that once again ‘tech dude bro YouTuber’ is detached from what the average end user actually want – the gimmick gizmo like a folding phone is just that, headlines are made by the shipment numbers are dwarfed by standard ‘candy bar’ style smartphones.

What do you mean by ‘falling behind’ – the problem is that there are far too many tech dude bros on YouTube who think that they represent ‘the every man’ the ‘Joe and Jane Sixpack’. In reality they go from one phone to another phone, from one device to the next one, from one honeymoon period to the next honeymoon period, high on the novelty of something new but not spending enough time to realise why a $300 phone that can take a photo of a flea farting from 200 metres is a bad idea when they offer only 2 years of software support but in reality the software update schedule is spotty at best.

Apple holds it’s position not because of gimmicky features or millions of features that the overwhelming majority will never use let alone ask for (but look good in specification documents that YouTube tech dude bros salivate over) but because when you buy an iPhone you know you’re going to be taken care of for the long term. From regular updates to an end to end ecosystem, it is a complete wrap around support structure in place that ensures that the experience of using an Apple product is always seamless – “it just works”. Great, LG creates a swivel phone, some vendor in China makes a ridiculously overspec’d phone but what happens in the end? LG throws in the towel and the vendor in China can barely get a software update out to fix issues that people on forums are routinely complaining about but the vendor doesn’t care because they’ve got the customer’s money so who cares.

I’ve said it in the past that I believe there is a gentleman’s agreement between Google and Samsung – Pixel will appear in markets with high iOS penetration to win those customers over with the Pixel phone and leave Samsung the markets where Android is the leader. For example, in New Zealand Android has a 53% market share and Google doesn’t push Pixel strongly in the market for the mainstream (although it is available through tech orientated retailers such as Mighty Ape and PB Tech along with a few others) where as in Australia iOS has a 60% market share and Google sells Pixel phones not only directly but also through Telstra and other mobile carriers along with traditional retail outlets.

In the case of Google their long term play is to gradually wean itself off a dependency on their ad business – their consumer services revenue is growing, they’re filling in the gaps when it comes to functionality such as directly providing RCS when carriers aren’t interested in doing it themselves, cloud based home security that integrates into the larger Google cloud ecosystem, their cloud business is finally getting itself sorted with growith and profits, and Google Workspace is growing particularly for those businesses that are starting out and have no legacy systems to contend with (which is why large businesses already using MIcrosoft Office were easy to move over to the Office 365 cloud). Hopefully Google will be smart enough to leverage Android’s first class integration into the Google ecosystem – sure, Microsoft has the benefit of Office and Windows legacy but the integration outside of Windows is disjointed in much the same way that you can use Google apps on iOS but they’re never going to be as good as how iOS integrates with iCloud. It makes me wonder how long Microsoft will keep out of the smartphone space – maybe their entry into that market will be via a handheld console? or maybe Microsoft just throws in the towel and builds an Android that integrates into their own ecosystem, I guess only time will tell.