My official entry into the Apple world was through an iPod Classic I purchased in 2007. Hard to believe in 2024, but yes, that iPod Classic 7th Gen had 512GB of storage space. Slightly off topic here, but come 2024, 512GB demands a premium which I find kind of weird and funny. Technology has pushed boundaries year-on-year but storage space is even more valuable than it was? Looking back, that particular iPod Classic model was a superb offering by Apple.
I used that iPod Classic to store music and photos. Tons and tons of photos. It was my nifty little hard drive that also gave me the pleasure of listening to music. It was super easy to transfer pictures to the iPod: import them into iTunes and export them to iPod. There was a caveat though, to say that getting those pictures out of iTunes was a challenge, is an understatement. It just wasn’t as intuitive and accessible as I would have liked it to be. I was only a student back then and couldn’t afford a MacBook where apparently it was easier to access and download your iPod data.
Somewhere in between those times I remember Apple asking me to create an Apple ID, and me complying. And me just forgetting about it and moving on.
Some 3-4 years later, my golden retriever’s hormones were responsible for a violent death of the iPod, and with that, all of my pictures which I so cherished. Meanwhile I cursed by lack of foresight to backup my images.
By then, Apple had discontinued the iPod Classic and launched the iPod Touch and iPhone, by which I was just so darn fascinated. Even though a part of me missed the iPod Classic. I hurriedly purchased a 16GB iPod Touch because I couldn’t survive without having music on-the-go. Apple asked me to enter my Apple ID and I complied again. Well, what’s the harm anyway?
Sometime when I was using the iPod Classic, Apple uploaded my pictures on the cloud via iTunes. I wasn’t notified or anything. It just happened, in the background somewhere.
One of those instances where I connected my iPod Touch to my computer to transfer some new music via iTunes, I noticed an Images section and wait, what?!? The images I had lost due at the demise of the iPod Touch, magically appeared in my iTunes. Not all of them, but most of them. Images those times weren’t as large as they are today, averaging at 100-200 KB a pop. Sometime when I was using the iPod Classic, Apple uploaded my pictures on the cloud via iTunes. I wasn’t notified or anything. It just happened, in the background somewhere. Even then tough, somehow I just couldn’t export my retrieved images in generic jpeg files onto my PC. It was annoying as hell.
Come 2024, and multiple iPhones and MacBooks later, I realise how I was swindled into being dependent on the Apple ecosystem without me suspecting. I am now subscribed to multiple Apple services: Apple Music, iCloud+, Apple Arcade. Heck, I even got a family plan!
The point I’m trying to make here is Apple gets a lot of hate for having a high walled garden (majorly from non-Apple users, lol), but sometimes we simply fail to appreciate just how seamless Apple makes the process, without one even noticing, and voila, everything just works the way it is meant to. I never asked Apple to save my passwords, but here I am logging onto one of my throwaway Reddit accounts (to make snarky comments in questionable communities) on my new MacBook and my password is autofilled.
How wonderful it is knowing you don’t have to enter a single OTP that you receive on your iPhone into your MacBook, without even setting anything up, just the first time Apple ID sign-in when you set up a new MacBook.
The rebellion in me made me buy storage plans from Google Drive because “nobody can lock me down!” (yeah, right), but hey, have you tried letting go of your Google Drive and used iCloud Drive and seen how seamless it works between your iPhone and MacBook? If you’ve just received an email with an attachment, and you want to use that attachment on a project uploaded in Notes. You open Notes and tap Insert and you’ll see the file appear for selection without you having to navigate through iCloud Drive.
How wonderful it is knowing you don’t have to enter a single OTP that you receive on your iPhone into your MacBook, without even setting anything up, just the first time Apple ID sign-in when you set up a new MacBook. Being a tech journalist has its perks, you get access to the latest and greatest devices. I wanted to see if this feature worked as well in the Android/Windows ecosystem. I used my Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus to link with my Windows desktop, it was a process with multiple steps to be taken on both machines, and it still doesn’t work the way I would like it to, when I want it to.
I just had a baby, and I’ve been researching baby names on Google during my commutes on my iPhone. I have a couple of links opened in Safari. I copy-paste some name candidates to the Notes app on my phone. How exhilarating it is to see that the moment I open up my MacBook, Safari on OSX automatically loads the links I was viewing on my iPhone, and the Notes app quietly synced instantaneously.
If I need to forward a text I’ve received on my phone while I’m working on my laptop, I simply do through the MacBook, I don’t even touch my phone. My AirPods also seamlessly switch between the iPhone and MacBook without me even having to raise a finger, or even setting something up. I just got done with a phone conversation on my iPhone and then I fire up a playlist on Apple Music (OSX), my AirPods switch to the Mac instantly, like magic. The first few times this happened, it felt like magic. If I’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network on the iPhone, the MacBook automatically picks it up and doesn’t even ask me a password. The works vice-versa too. If I need to copy a WhatsApp message on my phone and paste it onto a document I’m working on on the MacBook, I simply go ahead and do it, there is nothing I need to do in between.
My AirPods also seamlessly switch between the iPhone and MacBook without me even having to raise a finger, or even setting something up.
Add the Apple Watch into the mix, and I’m sure the ecosystem will add other layers of seamlessness to suit the purpose of the watch. This level of integration, togetherness, unity and oneness (all spiritual terms?) is only seen in the Apple ecosystem of products: iPhone, MacBook, iMac, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod.
Maybe I’m biased, maybe I’m not, probably you can judge better. But I do see a lot of hate directed towards Apple to having a “High Walled Garden” out of which getting out is almost impossible, especially in the dingy communities of Reddit and Quora. I’m not debating this, it might or might not be the case. But living inside the high walled garden is an easy, breezy and sorted life. I might be locked in it, but as long as it works as I expect it to and makes my life easier, I don’t mind it at all.
First and foremost, the seamless co-working of Apple devices is clinical and you will know it once you experience it. For Apple to achieve this level of superfluous working, seen in no other tech-ecosystem, the individual devices themselves need to execute applications clinically. While this sounds simple and straightforward, it isn’t. Just the way apps work in iOS is very different from how they run on Android. Since I have been using two devices together, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and my old trust iPhone 12 Mini (that form factor), I have been able to notice differences in the smallest of places.
Let us take Instagram for example. Yes, the S24 is able to launch the app faster than the iPhone 12 Mini, it is a newer phone after-all. But get started with the endless scrolling which coincidently I do a lot, and do I dare say that there is a genuine difference in how the iPhone runs the app against the Android. The S24 has a 120Hz screen, still, I perceive the iPhone to be much smoother. In Android, I get hit with a very sporadic jerkiness, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel that right. Maybe even after 10+ years of writing I’m still not a perfect articulator, but the difference is there and it is very evident.
Next, let’s talk about an app I use on the daily, Google Maps (sorry, Apple Maps). Ever since I got the S24, I have reset it to factory settings around 4-5 times, and I still face the same problem. Out of nowhere, just randomly, the “X” button to end navigation stops responding on the Droid. The first few times this happened I felt that maybe because I was customising every aspect of the Android, there must have been a some weird clash with Google Maps which caused this to happen. I reset the phone to factory settings, reinstalled Google Maps, and the same problem cropped up. I Googled the problem and there are a handful of people who’ve experienced this, but the source of this problem is not known, and neither is the fix. This sort of a thing has never happened on iOS. My confidence is so in iOS is so high that I don’t even expect such a thing to happen. But it keeps happening in Android, and that too in a latest-gen flagship phone.
ever since I bought the iPhone 12 Mini, some 3 years back, I have NEVER reset it to factory settings. I just never felt the need for it. On the other hand, I find myself resetting Android phones time and again
Not to mention that ever since I bought the iPhone 12 Mini, some 3 years back, I have NEVER reset it to factory settings. I just never felt the need for it. On the other hand, I find myself resetting Android phones time and again, just like how I find myself reinstalling Windows on my desktop every couple of months, but never so my MacBook. Before the M1 MacBook Pro, I owned a 2013 Macbook Air for a whopping eight years and never did I feel the need to reset the OS. You see, these are the reasons why I prefer being in Apple’s High Walled Garden, even though it’s apparently difficult to get out of it. How does it even matter? At-least the chains are made of gold and they’re comfortable to wear and they’re sexy to look at.
I still recall back when I had an iPad 2G (bought in 2012) and a Samsung Galaxy S6 (bought in 2014). I loved playing Hearthstone. The newer and more advanced Galaxy S6 always experienced frame rate drops, but my old trusty iPad never did. Sure, it loaded the game much slower than the Galaxy, understandable because it was based on older technology, but it gave a much smoother experience. The same scenario repeats itself in 2024 with Mighty DOOM. The Galaxy S24 starts dropping frames during long 30-minute+ sessions, but the iPhone 12 Mini never does. Not to mention the heat, the Galaxy heats up like crazy when gaming. While the iPhone 12 Mini does heat up, it is not as bad as the Galaxy S23. I’m curious to see the gaming performance on the iPhone 15 Pro versus the Samsung Galaxy S24.
How Does Apple Achieve This
This aspect is something Android (or Windows) has not been able to ace, so far. There is a solid reason for that. I have one word for you to describe the cause of this difference in execution and performance: OPTIMISATION. You see, Android as an OS is great in its own way, there is no doubt about it. But the OS has to be designed in a way that it is able to work in countless processor, memory, storage other hardware configurations. The operating system has to be designed in a way such that it gives a consistent experience across thousands of devices, all with different hardware permutations and combinations.
Because of this, the Operating System finds it challenging to give a consistent performance and experience. Apple does not have that problem. It never did. iOS and OSX are used only in Apple devices. Apple makes the hardware and the software. Apple designs its OS specifically for the hardware its devices are using. Ever since Apple started designing its own chips (the M series, A series), the experience, speed and stability of the OS and its apps has taken two steps ahead. That is why no laptop has even come close to offering the performance and efficiency of the M-chip laptops. That is also why the M1 MacBook Air is still of great value even today, more than three years after its launch. Intel’s latest platform laptops like the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro, AMD’s 4nm based Acer Swift Edge 16, are not even close to the efficiency of the M1 chip, let alone M2 and M3 chips. Non-Apple developers making software designed for the M chips (example: DaVinci Resolve) run so much snappier than their Windows counterparts. DaVinci Resolve has become my go-to video editing software, I prefer it over Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. Apple has opened up tons of possibilities with its M lineup of chips.
Still A Long Way To Go
Not all’s bells and whistles with the Apple Ecosystem. There is still the one big glaring miss: gaming. While Apple have definitely improved on this aspect with their M chips, I still swear by my Windows based gaming desktop. The Apple execs have continuously promised that OSX will get more games, but there simply aren’t enough. And it doesn’t seem like OSX will be catching up to Windows anytime soon. Sure, there are a lot challenges when it comes to acing a gaming ecosystem. Apple’s tendency to offer non-customisable and non-upgradeable machines is the biggest challenge. Games use different configurations, some can run in low-end hardware, for some you’ll need the cutting edge, and gamers love the freedom that a good-old desktop offers in terms of customisation (RGB, yaay!) and upgradeability.
In Apple’s defence, the game I play the most, Dota 2, is available on OSX, and runs just fine on my MacBook M1 Pro, with the graphics slider set to Medium. Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on OSX, and runs surprisingly good. To run it at maxed out settings on OSX you’ll have to shell out an arm and a leg for a top-config Mac, so there is still a caveat. You can get maxed out performance on a PC at a fraction of the cost of the Mac. So yes, there are these one-off games available on OSX, but these count as exceptional cases nowhere close to what you would expect a gaming ecosystem to be. I do wish that more and more game developers leverage the power of the M-chip by developing games from the ground-up for Apple’s chips.
