I've long admired Apple's industrial design and focus on customer experience.

However, I found Apples incompatibility with other software and hardware annoying.

In Elementary school my family had a shared desktop running Windows XP. In high school and college I used a Samsung flip phone (Custom OS) with keyboard and a Toshiba Laptop (Windows 7), and liked the school lab computers (Debian), although I eventually got a Google Android Nexus 7 Tablet for development. When I graduated college in 2014 I eventually got myself a Windows Phone and built myself a custom Desktop PC. When Windows Phone came to an end I switched to a Samsung Galaxy S8 and then a S10.

From experience I found Samsung Android annoying:

  • The Samsung and Google phones only seems to last a few years and the battery wasn't easily repairable.
  • Google was far too linked to Android and they had poor incentives for privacy.
  • There were a lot of junk Samsung and Google apps that couldn't be removed.
  • Android updates would frequently change UI and break apps. I used the Microsoft App Launcher to simplify the Android UI and an update broke it.
  • No access to iMessage which everyone on iPhone I knew used.

There were three reasons I found iPhone annoying:

  • Custom Lightning charger that was incompatible with my existing USB cables.
  • Inability to build and side load custom apps using my existing hardware.
  • Inability to use other browser engines than Safari.

When Apple Air Tags came out I got some to track my keys and linked them to my partners iPhone.

My viewpoint on iPhone changed in 2023 when Apple released the iPhone 15 which used a normal USB-C port and had a great camera. I got a iPhone 15 Pro Titanium. I had switched my interest to web development and no longer cared about side loading and using other browser engines.

The purchase of the iPhone 15 was the start of my journey into Apples walled garden. In short order I walked further and further in, ever more delighted, and ever less likely to come out.

  • Air Tags
  • iPhone
  • Charger
  • Airpods
  • Watch
  • Macbook Air
  • HomePod

Looking back I can see what I valued in a technology changed. I wanted a stable consistent simple distraction free compatible experience.

Phone App Comparison

I tend to limit the number of apps on my phone to the bare minimum I need, although even from a brief glance that's many common scenarios. Nearly every aspect of everyday activity has been appified.

From switching to iPhone I can say I prefer Apples built-in applications {Notes, Alarms, Calendar, Wallet} over the Android equivalent. The other apps are mostly the same, but they seem better integrated.

Communication, Scheduling & Organization

  • Call
  • Messaging
  • Calendar
  • Email
  • Camera
  • Alarms
  • Notes

Finance & Identification

  • Wallet
  • Banking Apps
  • Insurance
  • Authenticator
  • GitHub

Health

  • Doctor Communication

Search, Navigation, & Transportation

  • Browser
  • Maps
  • Airline
  • Ride share
  • Car
  • Parking

Shopping & Delivery

  • Amazon

Learning & Entertainment

  • Kindle
  • Wikipedia
  • Khan Academy

Home Automation

  • Lights

Moving to Mac

Probably the most significant change was moving over to Mac from Windows.

I've been looking for a new laptop for several years and I decided in 2024 I would get one during the annual shopping holiday at the end of the year.

I still have my Toshiba and it still works, however even after swapping it's hard drive to a SSD and updating to Windows 10, it's battery life was abysmal, it was relatively heavy, and had a loud fan. I also have an older Microsoft Surface, and it's actually fine, however I didn't enjoy the floppy keyboard. I specifically wanted a clamshell Laptop for writing.

I had wobbled back and forth for a few years between a Macbook Air and Surface Laptop and it was time to decide, specifically I was comparing the Macbook Air M3 and the new Surface Laptop powered by Arm.

From a hardware and price standpoint it's basically a tie, the hardware is about equivalent.

Hardware Differences:

Surface

  • Touchscreen
  • Face Login

Mac

  • Touch Login

From a software standpoint things are more interesting. It really came down to what programs were compatible with the new ARM chipsets and also with the iPhone. It was harder to assess this one. One main interest was Node.js file operations run about 4X faster on Mac than Windows, which is important for much of my web development.

What it came down to was Windows 11. Generally, I like Windows 10, it is pretty reliable, there were a bunch of small incremental nice changes, and things seemed to work well. Windows 11 from experience was the opposite, it changed a lot of things, and seemed flakey and unreliable, to the point where I actively don't want it running on any of my computers.

In contrast Mac hasn't significantly changed the UI in forever and generally people don't complain about a lack of reliability.

I was also curious about Mac.

So I got the Macbook Air and I've been using it as my main machine.

Notes

Why did I change?

  • Portability of the machine

  • Apple adoption of USB C

  • Messenger

    • Incompatibility between Android and iOS

  • Google garbage

  • Windows 11

    • End of support for my desktop hardware
    • Incompatibility between Windows 10 and iPhone
    • Ridiculous number of notifications

  • Outlook

    • Difficult to use calendar - used to coordinate between my partner and I.
    • Non separation of calendar and email

Working Together

  • Apple Watch unlocking iPhone and Mac
  • Password sync
  • Out of the box default applications
  • Airdrop - contacts
  • Automator - excellent
  • Find devices out of the box
  • Apps across devices
    • iCloud
    • Calendar
    • Find My
    • Alarm
    • Podcasts
  • Apple HomeKit

Simple focused experience

Workflows

  • Timers voice activation
  • Browse Web
  • Update /Check Calendar
  • Write Code
  • Write articles on my blog

Applications I care about

  • VS Code
  • GitHub Desktop
  • Notes
  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Virtual Box to run Ubuntu

Nice Features

  • Logo on back of the mac
  • Siri from the watch to set reminders and timers

Hardware comparison and price

  • Only looking at the Microsoft Surface and Apple Air
  • Cores
  • RAM
  • Storage
  • Weight

Missing Features

  • Safari lags behind other browsers
  • Touchscreen - would be helpful sometimes - on the other hand no screen smudges unlike my surface
  • Repair

Annoyances

  • Sharp pointy edges on the MacBook Air
  • Can't delete the chess app, books, stickies, TV, tips, Photo Booth, Music, News on mac (but can from iPhone?)
  • Slightly different keyboard layout and shortcuts

Learning

  • Shortcuts

Mac Tricks

  • Pressing the fingerprint reader key in the keyboard upper right corner locks the computer.

Apple Keys

Industry need to broaden competition allow swapping out of software components.

Flaws of Androids distribution model which allows vendors to make changes leading to incompatibility of the experience.