Making the Right Personal Technology Choices (Premium)

This is a discussion I’ve been meaning to have for a long time. And it’s a topic that permeates everything I do professionally, from the writing on this site to the podcasts I record each week.

But it’s also a nebulous, messy topic. It’s a lot easier to recommend a single app, service, PC, or phone than it is to discuss the more general thinking that should sit behind each of those decisions. But that thinking, that way of thinking, is important. And we all get stuck in some mode, or tradition, that can get in the way of making the right decisions.

For example, I’m rightfully associated with Microsoft, given a 20+ year career during which I’ve mostly written about this company and its products and services. But like Microsoft, I don’t exist in a vacuum. And from my earliest days of writing professionally, the one thing that always set me apart from most of my contemporaries is that I have always cared about, used, and wrote about products and services from Microsoft’s competitors as well.

This experience served me well when personal computing shifted from being PC-centric to being mobile- and cloud-centric, for example. When the iPhone hit, for example, I knew it was a big deal, and I spent much of the summer of 2007 writing about this then-new product, figuring out and explaining where it succeeded and where it failed. So much so, in fact, that I started getting complaints that perhaps my website, then called Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows, should be renamed to Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for iPhone.

What those thin-skinned Microsoft fans were missing is that being blindly loyal to a company—or a brand, or a platform—is silly. (And in that case, the Microsoft mobile solution of the day, Windows Mobile, was fricking terrible.) These entities are certainly not loyal to you, at all, and your reward for this loyalty will always be disappointment.

So, yes, I’m “loyal” to Microsoft, or Windows, or whatever, only insomuch as I feel that these things are better for me, and for people generally, than are the competition. Today, for example, I feel that many Windows 10-based PCs are far better solutions for most people than are competing products like Apple MacBooks, Chromebooks, or Linux-based PCs. But that doesn’t mean that I can just ignore those other things. I have to keep up on them as well, because things change. It also doesn’t mean that I can allow some bias to impact my opinion of those other things. MacBooks, Chromebooks, and, yes, even Linux-based PCs do some things better than do Windows 10. We all collectively need to know about those things. To be educated. To make good decisions.

Granted, I do this for a living. And I would never wish this lifestyle on any normal person. But you don’t have to be in a constant state of experimentation per se. Just keep your eyes open. And your mind.

Stay educated about your choices. There is nothing sadder to me than someone who, sticking with Windows phone as the obvious example, will claim that “it does everything they need.” No, it does not. And you will never know what you need—what new app, feature, or technology that is unavailable on that platform and always will be—unless you know what is available out in the world beyond your circled wagons.

Be curious. Read and learn, and do so from sources that you trust. And, seriously, examine and re-examine sources you might not normally gravitate to, perhaps because they cover platforms—Apple, Google, whatever—that you may not be currently using.

Seek quality, and not volume. Ignore the “noise,” those blogs that publish 100-word posts based on a single tweet, or on an app update that has no functional change, while offering no commentary or context. You know those blogs. They are a waste of your time.

Always look for the right tool for the job. Don’t get sucked into the false belief that one device—phone, tablet, PC, whatever—can magically do it all. Maybe it can … poorly. I think most people will need two devices for the foreseeable future. And if you’re a productivity worker, one of them will need a real keyboard and a big screen. (Today, the right tools are Android or iPhone on phones, iPad if you need a tablet, and Windows 10 on PCs/PC-like devices.)

This isn’t just about hardware: The right tool also applies to software and services. Trendy and popular doesn’t always equate to useful or best-in-class. Determine what is most important to you—I seek platform portability, for example, or what we might call universal accessibility—and don’t compromise. (Part of this is ignoring a lack of availability where it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to play music directly from my PC, but if I need to for some reason, the web service is there.)

Consider those solutions in which the maker has a real stake in the business. This is perhaps a bit unfair to Microsoft, but does anyone really believe this company is “all in” when it comes to music or TV shows, as an obvious example? There’s an argument to be made that you should choose services that are made by companies that only do that one thing, or mostly focus on that one thing. Spotify, Dropbox, and Evernote are obvious examples.

That said, this is becoming increasingly rare as these smaller companies realize they need to be part of a broader ecosystem to survive, so they are expanding and/or will be acquired, or will simply be left behind. So choose wisely. Choose OneDrive or Dropbox over, say, something called “Bob’s storage.”

Embrace change, in the sense that you should be ready to change at any time. My experience suggests that change is hard until you do it. Then you wonder why you waited so long. And in making that change, it makes future changes happen more easily, and with less stress.

Stop trying to save money on important products you’re going to use every day. Instead, find and understand where the value is. I routinely make bad financial decisions on products and services in the name of saving money because I’m not thinking of the long-term impact. My Pixel XL is a great example: This phone was so expensive that when I decided to purchase it, I opted for the lower-cost 32 GB model instead of the 128 GB model for $100 more. I regret this decision every time I pick up this phone because I can’t store all the apps, photos, music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other content that I’d like. So I spend a lot of time micromanaging storage, and I’ve wiped the phone out at least three times for a fresh start. Stupid.

Bias, again. There are lots of people who simply cannot fathom ever buying an Apple product, despite the fact that the iPhone is demonstrably better than any Android phone in the ways that truly matter, and that you don’t need to be locked into Apple’s software and services to use that device. Likewise, many refuse to use excellent services like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Photos, simply because they’re made by Google and they’re taking a moral stand against … something. Privacy? Ads? Who knows. They’re just hurting themselves. Don’t limit yourself because of a pointless ideal. You should use what’s best.

Ultimately, I think that’s what this comes down to: Contorting your brain to make the right decision for you by overcoming biases and tradition and actually choosing the right tool for the job, at all times, and in all situations. We routinely short-circuit this decision-making process, I think, basing our decisions on bad data, on illogical compromises, and worse, on some sad and pretend relationship with a company or brand. We all do this. And we all need to make a real effort to not do so.

Note: I’m sure I missed something. It’s a big topic. And of course, there are specific areas to investigate, as I did recently in Let’s Talk About Smartphone Pricing (Premium), which started as part of this article. Perhaps there are more similar expansions to be made.