On the ENEMY and How We Sabotage Ourselves

Over the past several months I've been making the switch away from Apple and taking up with the likes of Windows and Android instead of MacOS and iOS.

Don't get me wrong, the strides Apple has made in the hardware industry are outstanding and there is certainly a use case for Apple hardware in professional settings of all kinds. I'm not here to trash Apple, but to instead point out that often when we look upon something as "The Enemy" we are doing a disservice to ourselves.

For decades I was a staunch Apple supporter, always looking for the next best product from Apple, constantly upgrading my hardware when Apple would release something new, trying to keep up with the best they had to offer because I felt it was THE BEST.

In many cases, objectively, Apple simply is the best. But after all that time and money spent in Apple-land I could never find that spark that spoke to me the way my PowerBook 145B did way back in 1993.

I've owned PowerBooks, G3 Towers, iBooks, and nearly every iteration of the MacBook Pro since they were released.

To say that I haven't tried to move away from Apple in the past would be untrue (just look at the early posts of this very blog and how I had begun this whole journey to try and use Windows for 12 months and blog about my experience). I think part of my insistence and resistance was more due to what was familiar and what wasn't.

Before my current Pixel 6 Pro phone, my favorite phone I'd ever Owned was the Moto X 2. It was phenomenal and customizable and fit in your hand in a way that no phone since has managed to do. It was fast and the display was unlike anything available at the time. I ended up having to get rid of it due to work requirements around using iPhones.

In August I got my hands on a Razer Blade 15 Advanced. My previous review on it isn't very favorable, and I have to say that the support for Razer is seriously lacking, but I have found that it truly is a niche device that does gaming very well, but outside of that, it has some flaws. Most of the issues I've experienced with it have been resolved by a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows from Scratch as well as manual installs of all the Razer Tools (which still experience issues from time to time, but their optimizations make it worth the hassle when playing games).

I also got my hands on the Surface Laptop Studio Edition when it was released. My only complaint with this machine (what I'm typing on now) is that I didn't opt for the 1TB SSD and that's entirely my fault.

With the purchase of the Surface, I sold my M1 MacBook Pro and my 11" iPad Pro and haven't looked back. With the Surface, I have the tablet features I want on a fully realized OS, and I've found that Windows 11 is an OS that I far prefer over either Windows 10 or MacOS. I also understand that it has flaws (the task bar needs some work and, from pre-release updates appears to be getting at least some of that work done soon), and there's still a weird disconnect between the Settings app and Control Panel.

Aside from that, I'm very happy with how it works and find myself being far more productive and creative on the Surface than I ever was on either the iPad or the Mac.

Gaming is an absolute delight on the Razer, which in hindsight I probably would have just built out a desktop system for gaming, but this way I can carry it along with me when I travel for good gaming times.

The App Ecosystem for iOS does far outstrip Android, but for the apps I use every day and rely on to just get things done, the Android versions are far superior to the iOS counterparts because of their ability to work with the system - a feature that Apple tries to hinder. I understand their reasons, but I've not had any issues with the apps and services I have used across both platforms.

I'm not a much of a mobile gamer, so I don't pay much mind to the gaming side of things for my portable devices, though experience has shown me that Apple does have a better casual gaming experience with fewer ad-stuffed games (for example, the same game on iOS might show 1 ad every four levels, but on android shows 1 or more after EVERY level - experiences may vary, obviously).

The background on my Android is far more customizable, which has been very important to me in ways I hadn't expected. For a while, I had some Koi swimming around in the background and you could interact with them and the water. It was a calming way for me to take a moment to destress.

Now, with Matrix 4 due to come out, I've changed the background to the raining code from the movies, which I also find very calming and have since the first film was released.

In addition, little things like being able to place app icons anywhere on the home screens makes it possible to use a large phone and still have your apps reachable by your thumbs. Widgets are mor useful in Android as well and I can buy Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and make other purchases directly through the apps instead of having to leave the app to go to a website to make the purchase. I get why companies do that, but I also don't get why Apple demands 30% of those sorts of sales outside of greed.

I used to shout from the rooftops about Apple's privacy concerns and policies, but the truth is, eventually Tim Cook will leave, and somebody will take over, and unless there is massive governmental change, those privacy protections will be slowly eroded, and they'll gather just as much as Google and Microsoft and use it to start making money.

Maybe not this year, or next, maybe not for a decade, but I won't be surprised when it happens because they've already shown their willingness to do that in China and with their currently stalled rollout of scanning your images under the pretext of looking for child porn. It sounds good until you realize that if they can build something to look for specific images, they can build something to look for specific anything - giving the government and anybody else a possible back door into your files.

I'm actually more comfortable knowing that my data is already being scanned and gathered and anonymously sold off to target ads at me.

I don't mean to try and turn Apple into the Enemy here - the whole reason I started to write this piece was because everybody, Mac and Windows users, iOS and Android users, need to stop seeing the other as "The Enemy." If I hadn't attempted to drop that mantle about Windows, I would never have found out that Windows is a better environment for ME to work in.

Don't assume that just because something is different, it's inferior. That goes for people as well, by the way.

My ask is that you go out and try something new. Maybe you'll discover something truly useful.