After having read a story dealing with the ever-lasting „Android versus iOS“ war, I thought that it was time for me to try to collect my experiences concerning the topic into an article.

First, let me explain my situation, simply because I would like to get rid of unnecessary comments that say that I have no idea of what I am talking about because I only used Apple devices. I have been working with Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 10 without ever having not used one single version in between (including Windows Vista which I never found bad, but I will write another article on that later on). I used Android from 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to 7.1.2 Nougat (as I still do use it on my secondary phone that I use for programming). Therefore, I think that I can claim that I collected enough experiences to share my thoughts on this topic. I have always been using those systems as a power user, coding for a long time for and on Windows while building up an experience pleasant to me on both operating systems. I switched to an iPhone 5s in May 2016 to try out iPhones while keeping my Google Nexus 5, an astonishing phone that sadly suffered of the short life span that many Nexus 5 seem to have. I have installed macOS El Capitan in February 2016 to my ex-Windows machine and already updated it to Sierra and now the High Sierra Beta without any issues and without ever regretting to have left Windows. I left my ASUS laptop for a 12“ Retina MacBook from 2016 in October 2016, particularly loving the thinness, portability, build and screen of this computer.

This is the 12" Retina MacBook. “Can you even see it”, Tim Cook when he introduced it in 2015. Source: Wikimedia.

I will only explain four events where I saw macOS outgrow Windows by far in simplicity.

This is the first one: For years, I loved trying out various operating systems. Every person that does that has already heard of virtual machines, simply because they are the best way to do it. There are several virtualization solutions for Windows, macOS and Linux, I used Oracle’s VirtualBox most of the time on Windows. It had several flaws like the lack of graphics support in several operating systems, but this is not my point. The virtual hard drives (and therefore the whole base of the operating system) could only be virtual. The hard drive needed to be stored in a certain file, it could not be based off anything else. When I got my MacBook, I decided to install Windows on it for the case that I might need some software I could not find on macOS (which has not happened so far except for RAR files which I prefer to handle on Windows). After having thought of how I would install it, I was left with the choice of running Windows in a virtual machine or running it from a partition via Boot Camp, which is actually a little easier than installing Windows on a regular PC as you do not have to care about the installation of your device’s drivers, Boot Camp handles that for you. I decided to do it via Boot Camp, and yes, the installation really ran well and everything worked out of the box. It seems like the best devices to run Windows are Macs at all… As I had heard much of the famous Parallels Desktop, a virtualization software that is well-integrated with macOS, I wanted to try out how well it actually integrates with macOS and decided to use it to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine. What then absolutely blew my mind was that Parallels is actually capable of taking the Windows installation that is on the partition and make it usable as a guest operating system inside of macOS. I can therefore simply switch between using Windows in a virtual machine (and being able to launch all Windows programs right from macOS) and running Windows as the base system for more performance-heavy tasks like playing a game. While not being extremely important, this is one of the „little things“ that make Apple products such a pleasure to use.

Next, something I find to be rather funny, we will stick with the Windows topic: The emerging of high-resolution displays has shown us the next problem Windows has with going with the future after multi-core support: I am talking of scaling. Scaling actually worked far better when I let macOS do it via Parallels than when Windows did it by itself when the system ran as the base system. This is not a problem concerning only my MacBook, I had the same experience when I used a few modern laptops running Windows 10. Scaling simply does not work well on Windows.

I will move on with drivers now. A family member of mine chose to replace her printer with a new one, I took over her old one. This event can be divided into two advantages of Macs: The first one is that it took hours for her printer to work with Windows. While being completely new, Windows was not able to install the drivers by itself, leaving the task of configuring the printer entirely to the user. My family member, not being a techie, was not able to install it and my brother who had just brought her the printer took more than an hour to figure out how to set it up. In the mean time, I simply went into Settings on my Mac, clicked on Printers and started adding a new printer. The printer was visible directly to my Mac, I clicked on its icon and it was set up in less than one minute, letting me directly do a test print. The second advantage is based on me wanting to use the old printer she had. This printer was actually released in 2003, and while having been able to make it work with Windows 10, it took me quite some time to find the drivers myself to make it work, as Windows was not capable to do it. There were several drivers with different versions and the most recent did not work, in short terms, it was quite a hassle. When I connected the printer to the USB port of my AirPort router, I entered the Printer settings again, started to add a new one, and well… I had already searched a driver for it, but I didn’t need to do so, as the MacBook had already found it without me doing anything. It installed a Firmware Update for the printer and the driver itself and when it was done doing that, the printer worked perfectly. If it only worked so well everywhere.

Windows might need that, lol. Source: Wikimedia.

The last event I want to speak of is one of a school project a friend of mine and me had a few months ago. We were creating movies in groups and both of us had been selected to cut the movies in our groups. He owns a Dell XPS 13 from 2016, I decided to take my MacBook. He actually told me that he would be done by far earlier than me as his machine has a „real“ i5 processor and not such a „Core M“ crap. Well, using Premiere, his laptop had rendered a few seconds and crashed with a blue screen while I started rendering around two minutes later, without any crash or any problems. It ran through with success for me, he got three blue screens before abandoning and asking me whether he could do it on my MacBook. Raw performance is not always everything, stability is more important. I prefer to finish a race in a slower car than to have a Bugatti which crashes into something a few minutes after having started the race.

It is really not that of an ugly operating system. But seriously: clear lack of design consistency, this search bar is way too long and why is the clock not really at the right? Breaks the entire design of this corner. Source: Flickr.

Now, I would like to break down another major problem of Windows and Android. It is simply the problem of updates. While many people do not seem to care about their device being made a part of the „old ones“ on Android just one or two years after buying it, I do say that this is a shame. People who bought an iPhone 5 in 2012 for less than a Google Pixel costs today have gotten major system updates that were always on-time with the newer devices for 4 years, with minor version support lasting until today! Let us observe the Windows part: I love to see that our computers have been so capable in the last years that Windows and macOS computers have gotten updates for a very long time. The actual update span has been decent on both sides. But every person using Windows knows how annoying it is that Windows needs to install updates nearly every day. Small updates of course, but they reduce the time in which you can actually use your computer by installing before shutting them down and before they are started up. This is extremely annoying. A Mac on the other side gets a bigger update every few weeks. It takes more time to install it, but it is only every few weeks and you can install the update later if you have absolutely no time now and really need to use your computer.

Those who do not like Apple products love to say that they are by far more expensive than their Windows and Android counterparts. Well, if I look at the prices of a Surface Book or a Pixel or a Galaxy S8… I do not see that much of an advantage there? And while being as expensive as the Apple products matching them, I do not get excellent driver support and a secure and stable operating system (for macOS) or years of updates (for Android). Of course, buying a cheap new Windows PC changes the situation. But honestly, every person using a 200$ laptop that then compares it to a MacBook of course knows that the MacBook is better. How couldn’t it at all.

“Apple devices are always more expensive than the other ones”. Well, not really, as the Google Pixel does have the exact same pricing. But does get around half of the updates… Source: Flickr.

It happens quite often that I am being asked which phone someone should buy. When that happens, I always recommend them to buy an iPhone when the budget is 200€+ (I live in Germany, a used iPhone 5s costs around 150€-200€ with 16GB, an entry-level iPhone 7 costs around 750€). If it is less than 500€, I usually recommend them to get a used iPhone, which makes most sense when the budget is around 150€-300€. Why? Well, simply because a 150€ iPhone 5s will still get more updates in the next years than a new Android phone you buy at this price level and because the phone you will actually get will be better too. Maybe not on the performance side of the things (while the iPhones still could be more performant as iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 are still extremely well-performing phones and I can’t believe how performant they have stayed over the years that they got updates), but most probably at the camera side for example. And who does not enjoy having a good camera in his phone?

For people who want to customize their phone, of course an iPhone isn’t the way to go. But even I as a power user am ready to give away a few customization options to get a by far more stable and reliable system that gets updates for years and is supported far better than Android is. Kind of the same goes for Windows, just that I did not have the feeling of losing anything (if you forget all the annoying things of Windows) when I left it (for gamers: get a console or think of what I am writing now:). And as I already wrote above, for people who don’t feel comfortable with leaving Windows completely, you can always run it in a virtual machine or a partition (or both) on your Mac. The same sadly doesn’t go for macOS. As Jony Ive says, a truly great product is ultimately defined by the integration of its hardware and software, and I do fully agree. Do you really want to tell me that a Windows PC or an Android phone is better than a Mac or an iPhone if you can give away some customization options? You simply can’t.

By the way: This article was written on the most beautiful and portable laptop I and anyone else has ever seen, the 12-inch Retina MacBook from Apple with a gorgeous display and increadible speakers for its size with Ulysses, a writing program that like many tremendously well-built apps is exclusive to Apple devices. I listened to music with my Beats Pill+ from Apple via Apple Music while writing this article and sent it to Medium via Safari while being connected to an AirPort WiFi router, waiting to get comment notifications on my Apple Watch to read them on my iPhone while thinking of what I will watch with my Apple TV tonight via Netflix, which is by far more pleasant to use than a Chromecast or Fire TV because of the Siri Remote and is of course pricier because of that too. I am now entirely closed into Apple’s ecosystem, and there is no place where I would rather want to be in the tech world.