3 ms·

the true value of the iphone is the Apple ecosystem. i give an rat's ass about android phones, they could be miles ahead - doesn't matter anymore. just a phone

the true value of the iphone is the Apple ecosystem. i give an rat's ass about android phones, they could be miles ahead - doesn't matter anymore. just a phone. i have an iphone, ipad, apple tv, macbook air and a compatible printer. and everything just works, like magic. i've spent years in the windows ecosystem tinkering. wrote my own sync for my iriver mp3 player, fiddled with regedit and battled drivers. so much lost time. IT bullshit galore. so tired of it. i know that if i want an apple watch i can buy it and it will perfectly into the rest of my devices and just work with them. no other vendor can claim such a value. iOS8 and Yosemite make this crystal clear, the new handover between apps will even work from Apple Watch. Just like that.

Mikeb85 12y ago
You must have never used Google's cloud services. Docs, Drive, Hangouts, etc... Everything works device to device. Even a non-Google device that belongs to someone else. All you really need is Chrome and your credentials. How about Google Cloud print? All you need is to have Chrome on the computer that hooks up to your printer, and you can print to that printer from any device, even remotely. I can be at school/work and print to my printer at home... And if you buy a printer with the feature enabled, it doesn't even need to be hooked up to anything (except some sort of internet connection). And of course, Google Now. Tells me how far to work on the days I work. What the weather's like, even when I go out of town. Where my car is parked if I'm somewhere new. Where the restaurant I just called is located. Even the application on my phone that I use to call people (the one with a phone icon that used to just be for calling people) - I can search for their name and call them or, if it's a business or place I've never heard of, I can search for them in the same box, and it will find them and just call them. Super cool. I'm sure your Apple ecosystem is just fine, and I'm sure it feels like magic compared to Microsoft's sludgery... Heck, Linux feels like magic compared to MS. But on the other side, Google's ecosystem is absolutely fantastic. Oh yeah, and then there's Chromecast. But even without it most Smart TVs have some measure of compatibility with Google's ecosystem...
smrtinsert 12y ago
There really isn't that much fighting if there's fighting at all. The people buying Android in droves don't care. They see wide range of devices with more options. You might see an ecosystem, and they see lack of diversity.
tolmasky 12y ago
Its funny because my iPhone still doesn't support the same level of interconnectedness as sailing clicker did back in the feature phone days. I remember thinking it was so cool that my music would just pause on my mac if someone called me on my phone, or come back on when I walked back into my room. Apple's ecosystem seems to be increasingly based on obsolete ideas. Spotify offers me more magic than any weird hard-to-explain more expensive iTunes Matchery. My music is available everywhere. Actually everywhere. Not everywhere asterisk if its an apple product. If I'm at a friends house and I want him to listen to a cool song I heard, but my phone is out of battery, I can go to his computer and still play it, even if he doesn't have spotify because they have a web player. That's actual magic. Imagine if you could only watch youtube clips if you had a Google device or software. Its madness and far from an argument for "interconnectedness", and yet this is the situation the Apple music ecosystem is in. The handover technology is another recent disappointment in this regard. We are still stuck in app-land. Handover is app-to-app. So when I'm listening to a podcast in Safari, I won't be able to handover to Overcast on my phone. I actually have to wait for marco arment to write a desktop podcast player, and worse, I have to use it, to get this basic functionality. Again, an aggressive misunderstanding of what it means to have true continuity: reading the same data on two devices, not using the same app on both. Anyways, all this to say: I would have agreed with you ~4 years ago. But due to Apple's business interests (wanting to continue the own-music model much longer than people did, wanting to push app sales, etc), their ecosystem no longer represents what I want anymore, which is really unfortunate because I know that if they put their effort behind implementing real continuity, they'd do it best.
Oletros 12y ago
> i have an iphone, ipad, apple tv, macbook air and a compatible printer. and everything just works, like magic. I have a Nexus 5, HP Omni 10 Win 8.1 tablet, macbook air and compatible printer. And everything just work. Magic? I don't think so, but they work.
slantyyz 12y ago
> i have an iphone, ipad, apple tv, macbook air and a compatible printer. and everything just works, like magic. Um, YMMV. I (and people I know) had lots of problems with in-place upgrades to iOS7 on the iPhone 4. My proximity sensor stopped working and I'd end up face dialing while talking to people on the phone. Another friend of mine - the audio would cut out. The recommended fixes to the problem were inconvenient to say the least. I've had my share of issues with Apple products - Time Capsule, Airport Express, iTunes and a variety of Macs. So while they can have fewer issues than Windows, "magic" is not a word I would use myself. After Apple dropped the unibody form factor for the Macbook Pro in 2013 (my favorite form factor for a laptop - ever), I recently switched to Windows 8 for most of my hardware after being mostly Mac since 2005 -- and the transition was surprisingly easy (this software list helped a lot: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...). I'm not very happy with Window's font rendering on LCDs and some of stupid settings, but overall, I don't find that I miss the Apple ecosystem that much, if at all. I used to be what some people would call an Apple Fanboy, and while I still respect the products they come out with, they don't really have much that appeals to me any more.

Mikeb85 12y ago

You must have never used Google's cloud services. Docs, Drive, Hangouts, etc... Everything works device to device. Even a non-Google device that belongs to someone else. All you really need is Chrome and your credentials. How about Google Cloud print? All you need is to have Chrome on the computer that hooks up to your printer, and you can print to that printer from any device, even remotely. I can be at school/work and print to my printer at home... And if you buy a printer with the feature enabled, it doesn't even need to be hooked up to anything (except some sort of internet connection). And of course, Google Now. Tells me how far to work on the days I work. What the weather's like, even when I go out of town. Where my car is parked if I'm somewhere new. Where the restaurant I just called is located. Even the application on my phone that I use to call people (the one with a phone icon that used to just be for calling people) - I can search for their name and call them or, if it's a business or place I've never heard of, I can search for them in the same box, and it will find them and just call them. Super cool. I'm sure your Apple ecosystem is just fine, and I'm sure it feels like magic compared to Microsoft's sludgery... Heck, Linux feels like magic compared to MS. But on the other side, Google's ecosystem is absolutely fantastic. Oh yeah, and then there's Chromecast. But even without it most Smart TVs have some measure of compatibility with Google's ecosystem...

smrtinsert 12y ago

There really isn't that much fighting if there's fighting at all. The people buying Android in droves don't care. They see wide range of devices with more options. You might see an ecosystem, and they see lack of diversity.

tolmasky 12y ago

Its funny because my iPhone still doesn't support the same level of interconnectedness as sailing clicker did back in the feature phone days. I remember thinking it was so cool that my music would just pause on my mac if someone called me on my phone, or come back on when I walked back into my room. Apple's ecosystem seems to be increasingly based on obsolete ideas. Spotify offers me more magic than any weird hard-to-explain more expensive iTunes Matchery. My music is available everywhere. Actually everywhere. Not everywhere asterisk if its an apple product. If I'm at a friends house and I want him to listen to a cool song I heard, but my phone is out of battery, I can go to his computer and still play it, even if he doesn't have spotify because they have a web player. That's actual magic. Imagine if you could only watch youtube clips if you had a Google device or software. Its madness and far from an argument for "interconnectedness", and yet this is the situation the Apple music ecosystem is in. The handover technology is another recent disappointment in this regard. We are still stuck in app-land. Handover is app-to-app. So when I'm listening to a podcast in Safari, I won't be able to handover to Overcast on my phone. I actually have to wait for marco arment to write a desktop podcast player, and worse, I have to use it, to get this basic functionality. Again, an aggressive misunderstanding of what it means to have true continuity: reading the same data on two devices, not using the same app on both. Anyways, all this to say: I would have agreed with you ~4 years ago. But due to Apple's business interests (wanting to continue the own-music model much longer than people did, wanting to push app sales, etc), their ecosystem no longer represents what I want anymore, which is really unfortunate because I know that if they put their effort behind implementing real continuity, they'd do it best.

Oletros 12y ago

> i have an iphone, ipad, apple tv, macbook air and a compatible printer. and everything just works, like magic. I have a Nexus 5, HP Omni 10 Win 8.1 tablet, macbook air and compatible printer. And everything just work. Magic? I don't think so, but they work.

slantyyz 12y ago

> i have an iphone, ipad, apple tv, macbook air and a compatible printer. and everything just works, like magic. Um, YMMV. I (and people I know) had lots of problems with in-place upgrades to iOS7 on the iPhone 4. My proximity sensor stopped working and I'd end up face dialing while talking to people on the phone. Another friend of mine - the audio would cut out. The recommended fixes to the problem were inconvenient to say the least. I've had my share of issues with Apple products - Time Capsule, Airport Express, iTunes and a variety of Macs. So while they can have fewer issues than Windows, "magic" is not a word I would use myself. After Apple dropped the unibody form factor for the Macbook Pro in 2013 (my favorite form factor for a laptop - ever), I recently switched to Windows 8 for most of my hardware after being mostly Mac since 2005 -- and the transition was surprisingly easy (this software list helped a lot: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...). I'm not very happy with Window's font rendering on LCDs and some of stupid settings, but overall, I don't find that I miss the Apple ecosystem that much, if at all. I used to be what some people would call an Apple Fanboy, and while I still respect the products they come out with, they don't really have much that appeals to me any more.