I would have thought I already made a post on this. Unsure of how long this will be, I’ll preface this with the statement that I do not consider myself an ‘Apple Fanboy’. I do use nearly all Apple products (even their credit card, how much longer will that last), but to me the label is meant for people so dedicated and blinded by their admiration for a company (or even their fear to accept anything else) that they will use false notions to argue their stance. Ignoring all logic and reasoning and being as loyal as a puppy dog, biting anyone else’s hands that dares to reach for them. I take issue with a lot of what Apple takes action on or incorrectly states via buzzwords and false practices. I don’t like everything they’ve implemented, and I certainly dislike the bandwagon of the AI train. If you think you need to flaunt useless AI technology in your products as if they’re game changing experiences, you must not have anything actually new and useful to provide. That goes beyond Apple, that’s the entire tech and development industry at large with every new tech bubble. If a non-Android and non-Apple phone existed and in a decently fleshed out state I’d use it instead. I wish the PinePhone was decent. I also wish a classic non-smart Razr phone would return.
Why Apple
Before I go into the “why not” bits, which are just as much a reason as any other. I can at least provide the points for why I use so many Apple products. For one, aesthetics. Somehow, and I’m not sure what sparked it or nurtured it, I love the appeal of consistency and well thought out UX and design. I like when software and their related interfaces look as nice as they operate. This is coming from someone who used to use IRC and forums back in the day. They weren’t pretty by any means but they had their charm. Some of the fun, especially with IRC, was finding applications that supported it and added any meaningful flare to the interface. To me, Apple is stringent in their documentation that in some areas forces apps to share the design of the operating system. This isn’t a 100% guarantee, but it just feels more common to find good apps that mesh well with everything else you’d be using. Especially on a Mac, aside from a few open source apps that are just kinda shoehorned onto the platform, most apps fall into what a number of people call “Mac-assed apps”. A lot of these are often paid (and often more for cheap one time purchases) but they fit in with the focus on looking as good as the features they offer. It feels like, compared to my touch and go interactions with Android, the developers actually care for about the whole experience. Experiences that end up feeling worth paying for. To a lot of people, functionality is all they need and that’s fine too. To me, using Apple products is all about that personal preference to be in the same space as developers who care about the look and feel of an app just as much as ensuring the features it provides are just as functional. I dub this the “Apple tax” since you do typically need to pay for the best apps with the best functionality.
This is also applied to other platforms, and what I enjoy most about being in “the ecosystem” is that there is consistency. Not only consistency, but since every segmentation of the hardware (watch, phone, tablet, desktop, etc) is roughly always equivalent across years of updates it is just expected that what you buy will be supported for a long time (6+ years) and often will continue working just as well. No varying screen sizes and known hardware limitations. That is until batteries die (which are becoming easier to replace in the phones) or the systems slow down (which, to be frank, is how any technology will react to new software on old hardware). It’s all known and expected variables that are ensured from the get go. It remains to be seen if Apple will change this strategy with their AI focus, but barring that and looking at the history to date they have had and continue to have consistency. For better or worse, even their rhetoric and presentation (two things that are the primary thing I hear drive people away) has always been consistent. I personally care more about what they do, the actions taken, than how they flaunt a new feature. For actions alone, they remain consistent and committed.
Why Not Microsoft
Until Windows 11, the primary issue I took with using the platform (which even today, is the desktop I used more of my life than anything else) was inconsistency. You could find any app to do almost whatever you wanted, but every single app looked different. The absolute worst is when apps take common system controls like the close, minimize, and maximize buttons and put their own design over it. Sometimes making the close button super small, or bigger than the other two, and it always bugged me. Again, this is just personal preference. Functionally the only limitation Windows had on you was dictated by hardware. I grew up with laptops, so my ability to customize and buff specs was severely limited. Not that I didn’t try, I’ve at most replaced RAM in a few (simple and cheap, but I’ve also done this to my mac mini) and swapped HDD’s (out of necessity sometimes) but I found the process annoying and stressful, and even at my best attempt had left minor but noticeable scars on the casing.
Yet though even if I had a desktop, and made the sky (or my wallet) the limit, I’d never be able to find and setup all the programs I’d want that match and work in perfect harmony. I did, from college onward, try and use Linux, but that was almost the opposite of what I’ve now grown accustomed to with Apple. You could customize anything and install anything but that also meant you had to update and fix everything. I used Arch, which is the worse thing I could have done given my complaints, but given how often a simple update of packages would break anything at all I grew tired of it. I even tried a few other solutions that didn’t build on Arch but wasn’t happy with anything. In all cases I always had Linux setup on a laptop with dual booting, just in case I had to use Windows for anything. Believe it or not, up until a few years ago there were actually some sites that a US citizen had to use that required the use of Internet Explorer and nothing else. This has since changed, for better and for worse (hi, Chrome), but it is nice not to have to rely on technology from over two decades ago.
Windows 11, back when the beta first launched, put the nail in the coffin for me using the platform any further. Especially for work where using a Linux terminal was much more efficient and helpful. WSL(2) exists, but it is not as nice as a native terminal out of box on Linux or macOS. The lack of customization, the focus on more invasive features and cloud based services… and this was before Recall was even a thing, mind you. I just didn’t like that Windows was going the way of the fruit. I shouldn’t have to perform registry edits to be able to do something as simple as move the task bar. It’s okay and people will suck it up since Windows still allows using so much other software (such as games). It’s not consistent with what has been possible before, and that annoys me. The absence of choice is not nearly as bad as the continued removal of choices.
A fun fact, until my boss finally allowed me to get a MacBook for work I had disabled the TPM module in the BIOS on my Windows laptop to prevent Windows 11 from even trying to install. Just a fun thing I was proud of doing as my coworkers magically upgraded against their will. That’s not something I’ve ever experienced in all my decades using Windows, it only ever updated when I requested it to. Apple software also can be setup, even the apps themselves, to not update until you actually perform the click. They will, however, ping you every other week or so to remind you a new update does exist. Not so bad, especially if people using Windows 11 are still encountering reboots they didn’t ask for which is just a wild thing I almost can’t believe happens.
Why Not Google
I could go on such a long rant for this one. Apple is, in simplicity, only the lesser of two evils. They are no saints, they are not good people, they are not even good at what they do. In comparison to Google, however, they may as well be. I won’t go into the details of all the points and downfalls (Google’s history would make a good movie someday) but I’ll go over a few points.
The first one is simple. It was impossible to be a person growing up in the 00s/10s and never used any Google (now Alphabet) platform. Even if your computer didn’t originally use Google for search, eventually you would. Even if you didn’t use Google Chrome as a browser at first, you definitely tried it or used a computer where it was the default. You didn’t look for a video and never end up on YouTube. Now it’s completely possible some people may not have had a Gmail account, but even if they didn’t use it for email seemingly everyone made one for the sake of using any other service by Google (like Google Drive). It was inescapable, it was everywhere, and for long stretches of time it was actually good, if not the best option. They give us services for free, or for the price of information a lot of people are okay with giving.
Over time, though, this has all collapsed. Not swiftly, but slowly and over a long time. Things are constantly changing, new features that don’t actually improve the core experiences. The shuttering of good teams. New features and new acquisitions are constantly killed off — and this is honestly the biggest part, that so many features I used to enjoy using just no. longer. exist. Apps I used to love, snatched up and shut down and only half a decade later do one of their many features show back up in some other app of Google’s. They aren’t even consistent with their support, making promises for things and then coming up short and walking a step or two back. Google speaks the sweet words a lot of people want to hear, they don’t have that same pompous and haughty rhetoric that Apple keeps spouting. They’ll say they’ll support Android updates for 7 years (1 year longer than Apple’s average). Given their track record, it seems silly to believe it’ll match Apple’s feature back-porting or actually last that long. Google instead takes actions that go against any promises and any user friendly enhancements they could so easily commit. They can’t even commit to a non-legally binding and simple code of conduct. They’re open about what they truly do and in their actions show how much they really don’t care and that honesty means more to some than the actions being taken. Apple is no better, they do a lot of shady and scummy practices. They do at least put an attempt to supporting privacy and security even if there are multiple instances they’ve been called out upon otherwise. They have, at least to a degree, attempted to resolve some of these to some extent.
That’s not all to mention that Google is actually pretty open with the fact that you are the customer. They offer things for free, because your information can be given to whoever is willing to buy it. Features are implemented that seem great for you and open up new abilities for apps you use daily, yet that also opens more things up for advertisements and other features. Maybe it’s not so wrong that these devices do listen to us, because you talk about something and look it up or get an email about it and all of the sudden it can know without needing an actual microphone (some of those mics are listening though). To me, the fact this stretches to every aspect of the entirety of Google completely and utterly brings in my refusal to use Android devices, full stop. Not to mention so many of them think what Apple does is the golden rule, so there’s no headphone jack or SD card slot or any nicety that used to be used in campaigns against Apple. I have to wonder why Google or Samsung take pot shots when we all know they’ll mimic it all later down the line. They do what Apple does after Apple does it while having the scummiest business practices available. That’s okay for most people, because they just want to use these features for free. In a way, the common person wins when both sides are taking from the other. Healthy competition, for whatever side it’s healthiest for on a given cycle.
Alternatives
This all leaves people that dislike Apple to think that they should just accept Google because there are no alternatives. While I do still think it’s true for YouTube, there isn’t a single other Google owned service I use or need to use. A lot of those alternatives either require paying a subscription or otherwise spending $100 on a raspberry pi and having some technical know-how — and to me, that is worth it and also completely doable. A non-exhaustive list of common Google services that I use instead:
- Google Search – Kagi
- Gmail – iCloud
- Google Drive/Docs/etc – Nextcloud/iCloud
- Google Authenticator – 1Password
- Google Photos – iCloud Photos (could use Nextcloud instead)
- Google Calendar – Anything else, really.
- Google Translate – DeepL
- Google Maps/Waze – Apple Maps
- Google Keep – Any note app.
There’s countless other services but the point is that alternatives do exist (for nearly everything, surprisingly). At this point, not even to any detriment. Either because Google makes their services worse and unusable (Google Search) or other apps have gotten so good they stand on their own (Nextcloud). Nextcloud alone can handle several items on the list above, including additional software like Trello. The only reason I use Apple based products for anything is convenience and knowing there are people out there confirming Apple’s words with their actions. When those two things stray, people report it and Apple has to date tackled it eventually or the community finds a workaround. When it comes to Google, if you see something malicious at Google’s own hands that’s just how it goes and that’s what you signed up for. You just accept that’s how it should be and move on.
For me, at least, I had the friends to help and the time and money to stop believing that had to be the only truth. Having multiple people chip in severely cuts the costs down, makes setting things up easier, and makes something as simple as paying for a search engine feel not so bad. I said earlier for a lot people how Google and Microsoft operate and will continue to operate is perfectly fine for them (maybe annoying, but usable). I understand this, and so this entire post isn’t really meant to be some sort of “I told you so, now use this”. I don’t care what people use, people will always pick something they don’t like about some company and refuse to interact with them simply because of that. Everyone has their own preferences and priorities, and that’s okay.
I’m just glad that in this day and age, I have choices that look appealing and work without any sacrifice to the functionality I desire. Really, things can only get better from here even if the old alternatives to the things I use seem to be getting worse.
If I were to recommend any one thing, it would be to get a bunch of friends together to make paying for Kagi cheaper. Imagine if Google search was good and didn’t shove AI in your face every search. So, Google back a decade ago when it was good and gave you results you wanted. In a world where AI is increasingly prevalent and obscuring reality people owe it to themselves to be able to search for the information they really need to see. If I learned one thing in college, it was that you need to know how to research information for yourself. AI and TikTok won’t ever do that for you correctly, without bias or regard for human life and creativity.