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Re: Payments.
On my Android phone, I could download and use the banking app from my bank to make payments. I could set-up multiple apps (I have a private account and a joint account), and set my account as the default, but if I opened the joint account, before paying, it would use that app.
This also has the huge advantage that I could use any bank that has a banking app. On the iPhone, I can only use banks that Apple has approved. The bank of the joint account joined Apple Pay about a year after Apple Pay arrived in Germany - by that time, I’d been using tap-to-pay on Android for 2 years and tap-to-pay debit cards for 5 years, so Apple were very late to the party. The bank where my private account is started about 18 months later.
In addition, in Germany at least, it means that Apple gets to see my transactions as well as my bank. My bank is covered by BaFin, which is the regulatory body for banks and it is illegal for them to use my transactions for data mining, to work out my habits, or to sell my data to third parties. Apple isn’t bound by those rules, it just says that it doesn’t sell on the data.
Alex’s and Jason’s comments about it being a mess are far wide of the mark, coming from using the open system for years on Android - and it is an open system, all the banks, credit card companies, plus Google, Samsung and others support the tap-to-pay procedure and the machines in Germany are more likely to accept payments from the banks’ apps than from Google Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, although they are much more common now.
I also disagree with Andy, regarding just throwing more developers at the problem. In the long run, yes. In the short term, it actually slows down development. They have to be onboarded, they have to learn how things are done and work their way into how the code works. That also means existing programmers are less effective, as they have to mentor the new hires, until they are up to speed.
There is also the other angle, you can’t just keep throwing resources at a problem and it will get solved quicker, you hit logjams and deadlocks. People have to wait around for one piece of code to be finished, tested and booked back in, before they can do their changes. Again, beyond a certain point the more developers you throw at the solution, the less effective each individual will be, because they keep having to wait for others to complete their tasks, before they can continue.
Obviously, this depends very much on what resources you are throwing at which problems. Some areas will benefit, other not at all or it will be detrimental to the delivery timescales.
Feels like we’re the only two not on the cruise 
On eSIMS, how easy it is to switch phones comes down to your mobile carrier IME. The Apple implementation is quite neat. You scan the QR code you get once, and that’s remembered and sync’d to iCloud. Then you can enable that on any iPhone you are logged into.
Problem is, with the carriers I use it pops up a dialog saying eSIM already registered, speak to your carrier.
Androids I have, you have to rescan the QR every time (and get the same message to call your carrier).
So not as easy as popping a SIM out at the moment.
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Yeah, looks like.
I haven’t tried an eSIM yet. My current provider has the option, but I already had a physical SIM and for the first couple of days, I swapped back and forth a couple of times with the old phone. I’ve also used my private SIM on my company phone, because that has 2GB volume and my private phone has 25GB volume - was on a business trip and I am only allowed to hotspot onto my company phone with my laptop, not open networks or other 'phones.
Apple was not late to the party, America was!! 
I was going to try it on my Pixel 6 Pro, but my carrier, which is the low cost sub-brand of a larger carrier, operates with no free phone or online support and the only support you get are a few mall kiosks where they’re mostly there to sell phones, physical SIMs and onboard new customers. I went to the kiosk in the mall, and asked about eSIM. They said they would be happy to sell me one. After I picked my jaw of the counter I said “excuse me, but what exactly would you be selling me if I buy an eSIM? You do understand the ‘e’ part means it’s electronic and not a real SIM right?” And he said, we sell eSIM’s for $20, would you like one or not? We got in a protracted argument about how he couldn’t actually sell me something virtual and he got quite worked up, asked me to leave and to never come back.
What it turns out he wanted to sell me was a QR code printed on a piece of paper that basically was proof I had paid the $20 entitled me to use an eSIM. Once I realized their game, and knowing they sell regular SIMs for $20, I decided to end any further interest. If it was going to be that hard to get an eSIM activated, just imagine how hard it would eventually be to transfer it to another phone.
Not wanting to ever have to deal with the untrained, and unimaginative, staff at the kiosk, I think I am better off having a physical SIM I manage myself.
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