Opinion: Why I'm Still Buying Macs

There is a lot of vitriol on the internet concerning Apple right now. I mean, there's a lot of vitriol on the internet about, well, everything, and if you really want some solidarity about hating something specific, I'm sure you can find a website dedicated to that. But the releases of the iPhone 7 and the new MacBook Pro seem to have woken up the angry web to a degree I've just never seen before. Even the hyper-polarizing Apple Watch didn't get this much of a reaction.

And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I'm disappointed in with these products. The iPhone 7 design is basically the same as the 6, and that's boring. MacOS is ridiculously solid and useable, but it's getting a little stale and I really want "OS 11" to be a thing. And that last event didn't resolve any of my concerns about what's happening in their desktop space, and my iMac ain't gonna last forever!

(Okay, actually, given that I'm still using an iMac from 2007 for daily tasks, it just might. But that doesn't mean I want to use it forever.)

So given those frustrations and the seemingly popular belief that Apple has stopped making good stuff, you might wonder why I'm still planning on getting an iPhone 7 and why I'm currently planning on replacing my Macs with other Macs?

The simple fact of it is that for my particular use case, nobody else makes the integration of hardware and software between the mobile and desktop and living room spaces as simple and enjoyable as Apple does.

Apple makes great operating systems. I love iOS. And right here I'm going to forbid you asking whether it's better than Android. It's a silly question that doesn't take into account all the details of technology usage. For some people it is. For others it's not. For most people they're exactly comparable, and anymore they don't even look that different. MacOS is pretty similar. For me, it's better. For some people, Windows is better. For most people, they're basically identical. The fact is, if iOS and macOS died tomorrow, I could switch to using Android and Ubuntu with almost no issues other than some minor annoyances.

Apple also makes beautiful hardware. They love to push i/o standards and speeds, which appeals to me, and their industrial design is or has been literally copied by pretty much every computer or phone manufacturer aside from Microsoft (who marches to the tune of a VERY different drum than anyone else). I love the look and feel of their devices, and they're all so much more powerful than I need that it's a little crazy. But at the same time, I can get comparable phones and computers for comparable prices from a dozen other vendors.

It's the intersections where Apple sells it for me.

Yes, it's possible to get Android and Linux and Roku devices to all play nice together, and much of the same integration that Apple's ecosystem has can be recreated if you pick your devices carefully. I know this because I've played in that space. Buying stuff I don't need to see if I can make it do stuff I do need is a hobby of mine. But while I do love setting up a media serving system and getting everything configured so that I can share my screens and content and data around to whatever device I've got, it can be an enormous pain to maintain.

Apple's ecosystem isn't. For the most part, it's a sign-in-and-go setup process. Sometimes you have to toggle a switch. But all of the integration happens on the development side instead of in my hands, and that's a huge plus. In a world where all of the premium phones and premium computers cost about the same price for pretty comparable hardware, that cross-platform device integration and the tightly controlled user experience that Apple cultivates is very attractive to me.

So sure, there's issues. Apple's had, at best, a slow year, with 2016 only seeing better than marginal updates for the iPhone and MacBook Pro. I personally was hoping for desktops with updated internals (rumored to be coming in early 2017), an inrush of many games to the Apple TV (though that selection has been slowly improving), and it would have been nice to be surprised by something totally unexpected (MACOS 11 PLEASE???). I didn't get those things, and I'm bummed by that.

But for my use case, Apple is still offering the best collection of devices in the best ecosystem around. If they release iMacs and Mac Minis in 2017 that have the latest CPUs and GPUs, then the next computer I buy will almost certainly be a Mac. Just like every company, Apple does some frustrating things. But they are still selling some fantastic products.

So take all the vitriol with a grain of salt.