Exactly 180 days ago my life was changed upside down due to my wife’s decision. On my iPhone she was on a call, and she couldn’t hear other side. Out of frustration she broke a promise (of not ordering electronics gadget for me) she made to herself, and she ordered a Pixel 9. Thus, I was “converted” from Apple to Android.
To start off, I was not an iPhone guy. I was avid Android user. But COVID-19 pandemic changed that. While trying to order Pixel 3, online store wouldn’t deliver to my address. And just before that my work gave me an iPhone to keep official communications separate for data security requirements. So, my wife convinced me to order iPhone as carrying accessories (wired headphones and charger etc.) would be simple.
Few months after iPhone, Apple Watch arrived. So, thanks to Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and MacBook I was fully emersed in Apple’s ecosystem. When things work, they work really well. If you’re either on MacBook or iPad ordering something and for multi factor authentication OTP is received on iPhone, it shows prompts on iPad or MacBook. You can also forward from cellphone to iPad or MacBook.
While this is great about Apple’s ecosystem, I felt their app store is far too restrictive. As a geek you don’t get to play around to try different things. So, I was relieved when Pixel landed in hands. One of the major examples of how Google does things differently compared to Apple is WhatsApp. On Android phone, if you delete image that is received it automatically deletes it from Gallery and chat history. On iPhone, I couldn’t do that (could be user issue as well). As a result, WhatsApp was using more than 50 GB memory (BTW, I lost all my WhatsApp chats while migrating from iPhone to Android even though WhatsApp now offers cross platform migration utility, I screwed up. But good news is I started with clean slate!)
Switching from iPhone + Apple Watch to Pixel + Fitbit was far more complicated than I had imagined. This was no short of changing your religion!!! I can now understand why people don’t want to switch across platforms. After initial hiccups, I am now used to things. What made the experience worthwhile – I got Paper Toss back on my android not sure why Apple App store doesn’t have this wonderful game ….