Whew, I already know my answer is going to be long winded. It started with better products, but now it’s the ecosystem too. I’ve had my share of Android phones in the past when the smartphone race was a lot more competitive, but it’s become a lot less competitive in the last five years in my opinion. The same applies for macOS/Windows.
The last Android I had was the Galaxy S9+. The prospect of having something new with Android was exciting at first. At the time, iOS was a lot more locked down. For instance, I couldn’t even ask Siri to play a song on Spotify, you could only use Siri with Apple Music. There was no modern large screen iPhone. You were stuck choosing between the iPhone 8+ with huge bezels and a home button or a smaller iPhone X. The prospect of being able to customize more and have more freedom with Android on bleeding edge hardware really appealed to me. At the time, Samsung Galaxy phones always had the best hardware and at the best value.
However, once I had my S9+, I noticed customizing the phone the way I wanted to still required way more workarounds and tinkering than I anticipated. The OS wasn’t as free as I thought, or as it used to be when I had Androids in the past. Apps on Android were fewer and worse quality. Things overall weren’t as polished. The face unlock felt rudimentary and unsafe. I started experiencing battery drain that I couldn’t fix. The standby time was terrible compared to iPhone and iPad. Samsung was slow to deliver software updates. The dual aperture camera felt more like a gimmick than genuinely leading to better photos. I missed iMessage, messages syncing across devices, and AirDrop dearly. I was in college, and a lot of my friends and peers had iPhones, so missing out on the ecosystem with them sucked too. So, this pretty much all quickly extinguished my excitement for Android pretty quickly.
When I switched to my XS Max, it was so much more of a polished, higher quality experience overall, both hardware and software. I had never owned or really experienced an iPhone without a home button yet. The swipe to go home and swipe to switch apps interface was so much more intuitive and efficient compared to the home and back buttons on Android. FaceID was a much better experience than fingerprint scanners or Samsung’s rudimentary face unlock. I stuck with my XS Max for 3 years, the longest I’ve ever kept any phone. I was so happy with it.
Around the time that I had a Galaxy S9+, I had an old MacBook Pro that was truly at the end of its useful life to me. I wanted a new MacBook Pro very badly, but this is when the MacBook Pros had numerous issues (the 2016 touchbar generation), were slow to get processor updates, and were very expensive. I got a Dell XPS because it was about $1,000 cheaper and had a newer processor than even the MacBook Pro. While it was a great device, I really missed macOS, certain macOS software (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro), and the ecosystem features a lot and still was constantly desiring a MacBook Pro.
Eventually, I found an Apple Certified Refurbished 2018 MacBook Pro for $800 off its original MSRP. With the lower price tag and a lot of the improvements the 2018 refresh brought, I finally switched back to Mac and sold my Dell XPS. With me already having an XS Max, a 2017 iPad Pro, and now a Mac, I was really back into the ecosystem.
Since switching to the XS Max in 2018 and back to the Mac in 2019, a lot of the complaints and issues I had with iPhone and Mac have been removed or fixed. iOS has become a lot more open and less limiting. A lot of features Android had has now come to iPhone. iPhone hardware no longer feels outdated or stagnant compared to Android. iPhones mostly have good or great battery life now when they used to have a reputation for being horrible. The Macs have been completely revitalized with Apple Silicon to the point where Windows computers can‘t even compete on a pure performance and efficiency per dollar standpoint. Galaxy phones are no longer the great value they used to be. Google has hit a home run with the Pixel 7, but for years, it seemed like every Pixel came with some sort of drawback or problem that prevented it from being a true competitor. Privacy is a huge value to me, and I trust Google and Microsoft a lot less compared to Apple.
Since my last stint with Android and Windows about 4-5 years ago, I’ve just never had a desire to go back. Apple’s ecosystem and products has only gotten better while the competition has gotten worse in comparison, and so I’ve sunk myself more and more into Apple ecosystem which, yes, keeps me more trapped, but I’ve also never been happier with my tech devices than I have now.
My last phone was the iPhone X, which was just tolerable because it had rounded edges and was a bit smaller. However, all the full-size iPhones that came after it feel like a brick in the hand, absolutely clumsy and uncomfortable. It's a shame that Apple has discontinued the Mini series, especially because they had a nice price. I have no interest in the extremely expensive Pro devices and would definitely not buy a base model for 999 Euros, my current phone was 799.
