Why I don't regret leaving Android

In the US, you really have two choices for phone operating systems. (Since they killed my blackberry and windows phone). I had been an android user since my blackberry was pried out of my cold frustrated hands. I actually really liked android, I liked the openness, and I really liked the Pixel phone line; mostly for the simple clean software experience. But I got really tired of Google constantly killing core platform apps.

Messaging app after messaging apps killed. Video chat apps killed. Yes, there are amazing third party applications on android and that’s sort of the trade-off you make for that platform. And android phones were cheaper.

But then, the android phones, specifically the pixel phones, got more and more expensive. And Google continued to underinvest in their first-party apps. Like I remember when they killed Google play music? And when they killed their podcast app? and they were like, just use YouTube music. Like what the actual fuck. lol

While all this was going on, I watched my family members enjoying iMessage features, and FaceTiming each other, and being able to add and remove people from group chats. Yes, Apple has a walled garden, but at least it’s a garden lol. And then there was the whole part where Google was always selling your data, because that was their main product. They didn’t have to build good products because selling products was not their main business. So I bailed.

I bailed specifically the year that the second iPhone mini was announced and bought one. The first thing I realized was the polish of the Apple experience (in most places). Setting up the phone and transferring my data was simple. Every first party app felt well invested in. Not perfect, but feature rich. Google had basically forgotten about their tasks app at the time, but the Apple Reminders app? More features than I knew what to do with.

The reason I a really felt good about my decision was what happed after that. I noticed with every iOS update, Apple updates a lot more of their first party apps that Google did. Google made os level updates, which were generally good, but you got the sense that the individual app teams weren’t always focused on their apps. Where as with Apple, every os update felt like each team was working on their apps at the same time. And their ecosystem just felt so cohesive. In a way that is sometimes legitimately mind blowing.

Recently, I had a moment where I placed my iPad under my monitor and propped it up, and then I tried to move my mouse to the dock, and saw that it disappeared. A moment later I realized that my mouse cursor had moved to my iPad automatically, and it just worked. The same thing happened when I put a different MacBook on my desk, I could control the other MacBook that was docked and linked to my monitor. No setup required. Just intelligent software.

This is the thing. Apple is very pretentious about their ecosystem and very closed off. But the trade-off is, their first-party integrations are legitimately impressive and user-focused. And if they didn’t keep that closed, their business model will fall apart. Because unlike Google, if they don’t sell you devices, they will fail. That and their services are really their only revenue streams . So I kinda get it. They could stand to be a little more open, but I get it.

The longer I’ve been in the Apple world, the more rewarding it’s been. All the first party apps have gotten better. They even added a journal app, which is something that if Google had done, (which they still haven’t) I would be skeptical because they sell ALL YOUR DATA. But Apple doesn’t sell data, so it feels more comfortable. I use the fuck out of the journal app, and it’s gotten better and better. I recently noticed you can now set up multiple journals! If this was a Google app, they wouldn’t have updated it for 3 years and then killed it. But with Apple I’m not afraid to commit to an app because I legitimately feel they will support it.

And now that the AI wave is here, even though Apple took forever to actually build their functionality, I’m happy with it. I have the Siri beta and it’s good! It’s especially good because I’m comfortable giving Siri my data, because they’ve built an externally verifiable data privacy and security practice around it. Something Google will never do because their main business is Ads!

I don’t really wanna just praise Apple endlessly because I do have legitimate gripes with their closeness and how large and powerful they are in the US, but Google is just as large and problematic, and at least with Apple you aren’t the product, the product is the product.