So while iPhones and Androids may have little features that set them apart from each other, they are still, by and large, running the same major apps, connecting to the same big services. Both of them got exactly what they wanted from the smartphone business.
The same goes for the mobile platforms, too.Īpple and Google both won: Apple's iPhone is ridiculously profitable, while one in every five people on the planet owns an Android smartphone. All Microsoft wants is a better device for people to use Windows. Windows is everywhere.ĭespite Microsoft's claims that it's twice as fast as a MacBook Pro, the Surface Book isn't meant to destroy Apple, nor is anybody seriously expecting it to.
And they're both successful for their parent companies in their own ways. And I'm rediscovering that there's a lot to like (performance, stability, iPhone superpowers) - and a lot that's annoying (no touchscreen, no Cortana). Now the Lenovo is at the Microsoft Store getting some work done, and I'm back to my Mac, now running the brand-new Apple OS X El Capitan. I found a lot to like (the touchscreen, Cortana, window management) - and a lot that was annoying (random crashes).
The operating system wars are overįor the last few weeks, I had been using a Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 with Windows 10 instead of my MacBook Air.
And it's less of a "choice" than ever before.īecause so much of what we do these days is based in the browser, Mac versus PC is no longer a lifestyle decision like it was back when boxed software ruled all. Well, guess what? The world has moved on. When I wrote a piece a little while back lamenting the fact that the iPhone doesn't play nicely with Windows the way Android can, a reader said I was "cocking stupid," just as one example. People are still crazy protective of the computers and phones they use. Sometimes, it feels like those days never ended. Multicolored iMacs, circa the late nineties. It was a big part of Apple's turnaround story, as the iMac brought the company back from the brink of disaster, paving the way for the massive success of the iPod, and then the iPhone, which turned Apple into the most valuable company in the world.
Each of us begrudged the other everything.Apple stoked the flames with its famous " Get a Mac" ads circa the late 2000s, in which actors John Hodgman and Justin Long played a PC and a Mac, respectively, showing how the PC was old and stodgy but the Mac was young and hip.
I said that the Windows PC was way more versatile. He said that the Mac may have had less software, but what was there was simply better. We got into fierce, week-long arguments about it, in the way that only ten-year-olds can. Well, one game in particular: "Marathon," a first-person shooter, which was only for the Mac. I loved video games, and he loved video games, but he especially loved games on his Mac. The PC was portrayed as stodgy, and the Mac was portrayed as young and coolīack when I was a kid in the late 1990s, most everyone I knew had a Windows 95 PC, myself included.īut I had this one friend whose family owned a Mac - one of those multicolored iMacs that were the company's first big product launch after Steve Jobs returned to the company. Apple's popular "Get a Mac" TV ad campaign.