I recently made the daunting switch from iPhone to Android with my purchase of the Nexus 5 three weeks ago, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision. In making the change, I finally untethered myself from the iOS & iCloud ecosystem Apple has built, the high-walled garden of cross-platform services which adds a very tangible cost to switching OS (usually through extensive manual exertion but also through the use of expensive services to help manage the transition of information and data).
Just 2 years ago I could never have abandoned the only system which managed my contacts, messages, movies, music, books, photos, notes and documents across my phone, tablet and Macbook. Today however, a slew of high-quality, cross-platform cloud services are liberating customers from being locked into any one network, in the process helping people like me transition platforms painlessly.
Let’s just run through the list of services I use to manage all my information: Evernote (notes); Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO GO (Movies and TV); Spotify (Music); the Amazon Kindle app (books); Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger (messages); ThisLife (Photos); Dropbox (documents).
Admittedly, my adoption of some of these cloud services (Spotify Premium in particular) was motivated by the fact that my hard drive was destroyed after an unfortunate milk spillage, and my original content was lost (much of my music wasn’t purchased on iTunes so I couldn’t re-download it from the cloud); however, the services mentioned above are all superior to the Apple equivalents, and their millions of users suggests that many others agree with me.
Apple is being attacked on all fronts, on hardware, software and even its ability to create the most innovative marketing campaigns. Losing its competitive advantage of having the “stickiest” ecosystem could be its biggest threat overall, as people lose their fear of the transaction costs associated with dropping iOS.
That other beneficiary of operating a closed network, Facebook, better pay attention…
Until next time!
Ross Garlick
Rambler-in-Chief
Ross Rambles 