Backstreetboy's Apple review

What started it all for me
For the past few years I was reading a lot of Daniel eran articles on Apple Insider https://appleinsider.com/editor/daniel+eran+dilger. Most of the ones about the competition and his takedown of the media are pretty spot on. The biggest thing however was watching Steve Jobs videos on the Youtube time machine. All his interviews are all essential viewing. He also changed my mind because I thought Apple was more about the HW and not SW. I realised I had it the wrong way around after hearing him. It's true he can probably sell a bible to an atheist. He was just so good. There's probably a lot more I'll learn and there are a few quotes I tell myself every day now. The OS X and Powerbook G4 product launches were also really great.

I also love watching creator videos on old Apple products like the Macintoch TV and Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. It's really nice to see how far ahead some of those products were.
 
backstreetboy said:
What started it all for me
For the past few years I was reading a lot of Daniel eran articles on Apple Insider https://appleinsider.com/editor/daniel+eran+dilger. Most of the ones about the competition and his takedown of the media are pretty spot on. The biggest thing however was watching Steve Jobs videos on the Youtube time machine. All his interviews are all essential viewing. He also changed my mind because I thought Apple was more about the HW and not SW. I realised I had it the wrong way around after hearing him. It's true he can probably sell a bible to an atheist. He was just so good. There's probably a lot more I'll learn and there are a few quotes I tell myself every day now. The OS X and Powerbook G4 product launches were also really great.

I also love watching creator videos on old Apple products like the Macintoch TV and Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. It's really nice to see how far ahead some of those products were.
Click to expand...

PowerBook G4 is to this day the most reliable machine I ever had.

It literally never ever had a kernel panic or even minor software crash. Not a single one.

Uptime at one point was a 117 days which back in the day was madness for a machine that traveled on my back every morning motorcycles to work and back.

It’s my favourite part about the new 14 and 16-inches that they have pretty much that same square design again and even the colour option.
 
Family sharing
The Apple implementation of family sharing is just better and way easier to see if an app supports it. More quality apps support it and it's seamless. Infuse, VPN, AI, Photomator, 1blocker etc. all support it and it works great. It's just another benefit of the Apple ecosystem. Google Play family sharing just doesn't compete.
 
The final update

So I've been using Apple for over a year now and I thought I'll just give a final update.

M1 Air
It's my most used Apple product now. It takes getting used to if you've used Windows and some Linux for 20 years and also there are some missing features but the stability is just second to none. It also made me more productive and I was able to sort out my digital files down from 30gb to just 3gb of stuff I really want to keep. I'm going through my photos now. The way most apps are just a file and you can update them just by replacing the old one with the new is really great and way way better than the Windows way. I'll definitely get the M3 Air.

Apple TV
The speed obviously but also the fact that it's just rows of icons on one screen are superior to the Android TV / Google TV interface where you must set favorites on one tab and all installed apps are accessed on a different tab. Even with the price they are I'm sure one of mine already paid for itself since I wanted to swap out the Mi stick 4k I had with a Nova box anyway to get double the storage. I'll definitely get an AV1 ATV if that comes out.

Apple Watch
It's so useful I'm fine with charging it every day and a half to 2 days. Even having to install the Duffy app to get a pedometer complication I don't mind. It's great that you can personalize this a lot more and change the color scheme every week or so. I'll definitely get a regular series 10 or so in the future.

iPhone 14
I gave the SE to a family member and his only complaints are the bezels and small screen size. So if you're fine with the size then that's a great purchase. The 14 is really good for me getting 6h SOT and FaceID is nice. The Pro Max is really tempting but I'm just going to stick with the regular models. They're all you need unless you're a heavy user or need all the cameras.

iPad 9th gen
It'll supposedly only get 2 more updates so we'll see. If they release an 11th gen with A15 bionic and 4/6gb of RAM I'll definitely get that. If they give iPadOS more love than an iPad Pro will be a much easier choice. Nontheless I like the 9th gen. For media consumption it's great and the battery life is really good as well.

All in
The best way I'd say to do this is to really go all in and get atleast 3 Apple devices. I'm glad i did that.

Negatives
A big negative is being stuck in the ecosystem. Personally switching to Apple was quite easy and I assume switching back will be easy enough as well. The biggest thing will be to manually switch off iMessage (we use Whatsapp here anway) and for me I have a bunch of serivces with a hide my email address I'd have to switch manually as well. Should probably take me an hour at most.

I also think it's not such a big deal anyway. For most of my life I've been stuck in the Philips ecosystem and preferring their brand becuase you mostly get a device that works as expected with good quality. Same with Bosch as well. This is similar.

That ends this. Honestly it was quite surprising.
 
backstreetboy said:
The final update

So I've been using Apple for over a year now and I thought I'll just give a final update.

M1 Air
It's my most used Apple product now. It takes getting used to if you've used Windows and some Linux for 20 years and also there are some missing features but the stability is just second to none. It also made me more productive and I was able to sort out my digital files down from 30gb to just 3gb of stuff I really want to keep. I'm going through my photos now. The way most apps are just a file and you can update them just by replacing the old one with the new is really great and way way better than the Windows way. I'll definitely get the M3 Air.

Apple TV
The speed obviously but also the fact that it's just rows of icons on one screen are superior to the Android TV / Google TV interface where you must set favorites on one tab and all installed apps are accessed on a different tab. Even with the price they are I'm sure one of mine already paid for itself since I wanted to swap out the Mi stick 4k I had with a Nova box anyway to get double the storage. I'll definitely get an AV1 ATV if that comes out.

Apple Watch
It's so useful I'm fine with charging it every day and a half to 2 days. Even having to install the Duffy app to get a pedometer complication I don't mind. It's great that you can personalize this a lot more and change the color scheme every week or so. I'll definitely get a regular series 10 or so in the future.

iPhone 14
I gave the SE to a family member and his only complaints are the bezels and small screen size. So if you're fine with the size then that's a great purchase. The 14 is really good for me getting 6h SOT and FaceID is nice. The Pro Max is really tempting but I'm just going to stick with the regular models. They're all you need unless you're a heavy user or need all the cameras.

iPad 9th gen
It'll supposedly only get 2 more updates so we'll see. If they release an 11th gen with A15 bionic and 4/6gb of RAM I'll definitely get that. If they give iPadOS more love than an iPad Pro will be a much easier choice. Nontheless I like the 9th gen. For media consumption it's great and the battery life is really good as well.

All in
The best way I'd say to do this is to really go all in and get atleast 3 Apple devices. I'm glad i did that.

Negatives
A big negative is being stuck in the ecosystem. Personally switching to Apple was quite easy and I assume switching back will be easy enough as well. The biggest thing will be to manually switch off iMessage (we use Whatsapp here anway) and for me I have a bunch of serivces with a hide my email address I'd have to switch manually as well. Should probably take me an hour at most.

I also think it's not such a big deal anyway. For most of my life I've been stuck in the Philips ecosystem and preferring their brand becuase you mostly get a device that works as expected with good quality. Same with Bosch as well. This is similar.

That ends this. Honestly it was quite surprising.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update.

Yes the ecosystem is definitely hard to leave. But is it even worth it to leave though?

In my case it isnt even necessarily the hardware but more due to software and iCloud.

My wife and I share Apple Notes, Apple Calendar, Find My (Location Sharing) and iCloud Photos.
Apple Pay is also much better to me than Samsung Pay or Google Pay.

Even though there are alternatives on Android ie Google Calendar, Google Keep, Google Maps and Google Photos, it just doesnt work as nice and isnt as seamless.

The iPhone obviously also has a some flaws such as worse keyboard, less features such as split screen, customisation etc. iOS also has a lot of bugs at the moment, but even still it feels a lot more polished than Android.

Overall, to me, the iPhone and Apple ecosystem just gives me a more consistent experience and it feels like it requires less work to be productive on it when compared to Android.
 
You are correct about the ecosystem. If there is one thing that makes Apple pay for itself, it is this. It is seamless and makes work life with numerous devices and sharing data between them much easier. If I think back to my days of trying to get this same level of integration between Mac and Android, it sucked up a huge amount of time.
 
I fear you may have missed a lot if you think Messages and hidden email are core components of the "ecosystem".
 
Last edited:
backstreetboy said:
The way most apps are just a file and you can update them just by replacing the old one with the new is really great and way way better than the Windows way.
Click to expand...

Folder technically, but yes.

Negatives
and for me I have a bunch of serivces with a hide my email address I'd have to switch manually as well. Should probably take me an hour at most.
Click to expand...

Well your Apple ID and iCloud don’t need to die if you move away so those services could just keep going.

For me the ecosystem is the big positive that makes ever moving away almost inconceivable.

I tried an Android daily driver for almost a year and my life fell apart so hell no to that.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Folder technically, but yes.



Well your Apple ID and iCloud don’t need to die if you move away so those services could just keep going.

For me the ecosystem is the big positive that makes ever moving away almost inconceivable.

I tried an Android daily driver for almost a year and my life fell apart so hell no to that.
Click to expand...
I’m actually flabbergasted you tried a year o_O

Did you lose a bet or something? :laugh:
 
FiestaST said:
I’m actually flabbergasted you tried a year o_O

Did you lose a bet or something? :laugh:
Click to expand...

I’m actually very open to trying different things just to confirm that the things I love and trust are still at the top.

Went for a Lumia first and then an Android after that as I recall.

There’s a massive write up about it somewhere on here from what I remember but it must have been almost a decade ago now, think it was still Android 6.

I should probably do a little write up of my experience transitioning from an iPad 9th generation + Apple Pencil 1 to an iPad Pro 12.9-inch + Apple Pencil 2 after I’ve spent a week or three with it.
 
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More things that grind my gears. Tapping continue on this popup on every Apple app after an iOS update.
 
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