Why Apple, When Apple (Premium)

Reductionism is a powerful negative force that’s perhaps too easy to fall into. I’ve dealt with it for decades in my professional life. We all have. I saw this issue all the time when Mary Jo was partnering with me on Windows Weekly. To many, Mary Jo was just a cat owner. Or a Notepad user. Or a lover of IPA beers. And … that was it. No nuance. No understanding of the complex human being there and the decades of experiences that helped make her who she is. Just a simple reduction to a pithy, incomplete, and inadequate summary. None of which accurately describes a person.

Reductionism 101

When it comes to me in a professional sense, I get it. I’m a Windows guy. Maybe the Windows guy, depending on your perspective. This is accurate enough, I guess. But it’s also unfair–reductionist–because it ignores one of the key ways I differentiate myself from my peers and competitors: I have always used rival platforms prolifically, in part so I could stay educated and up-to-date about the relative pros and cons of these systems. And in part because that’s what I do with everything in life. I’m always looking to improve, and if there are better tech products and services than those I’m currently using, I’ll switch if it makes sense to do so.

But Apple is unique in some ways. Problematic. And you can sense the insecurities that arise in certain quarters when I speak or write too favorably about this company and its products. The Windows community has suffered from decades of defeats on the consumer side, and the added ignominy of Microsoft ignoring and now actively undermining the OS in some ways doesn’t help. We’re overly sensitive, perhaps. Waiting to be triggered.

The first time this really blew up in my face was 2007, when Apple announced and then released the first iPhone. By that point, Apple was already an obsession for fans and detractors alike, thanks to its unexpected resurgence under Steve Jobs and its transition to a personal electronics maker with the iPod. The iPod was bad enough for Windows guys, in their view it was just another me-too MP3 player that didn’t deserve the accolades and sales it garnered. But MP3 players were, at best, a secondary concern. The iPhone was an affront, an open declaration of war. Some did not handle this well.

Looking back on my coverage of the iPhone that year, I see familiar patterns of me trying to understand what this all meant and then communicating it to others in real-time. I didn’t get everything right, but I did see its importance. And that’s why I wrote about the iPhone exhaustively, pointing out all the ways in which it succeeded–there were many–but also how it fell short in conforming to the mobile standards Microsoft had created for the workforce. Apple resolved those issues with iPhoneOS 2.0 the next year, an implicit admission to the failings I had pointed out. But I dealt with a lot of pushback from the haters in both directions. The comment I remember most clearly sarcastically recommended that I rename my website, the SuperSite for Windows, to the SuperSite for iPhone since I was suddenly writing about the Apple product so much.

That was a nonsensical and immature reaction to the changes the iPhone delivered. And while it’s somewhat understandable on some level, I didn’t appreciate the “kill the messenger” aspects of this criticism. I wasn’t switching to Apple. I was just pointing out that they had done something great. That this was true is, of course, obvious. But that the iPhone would change the world, and reset the dynamic in which Microsoft, alone, ruled personal computing, was still unclear to most. We all woke up to this new reality at our own speed. But as it became clearer, some reacted poorly, lashing out at those around them. Some still do. We’re overly sensitive to these things.

Flash forward to 2024, and so much has changed. And so much hasn’t changed, too. When I purchased a MacBook Air M3 at great expense and then reviewed it, I framed it as a sort of competitive analysis, since the first viable Windows on Arm PCs would ship a few months later. (We didn’t know about the Copilot+ PC branding at the time.) That was true, but in describing it that way, I got some predictable feedback. Among it was a belief that I had “finally” or “suddenly” discovered the wonders of what was happening over in Apple land.

Again, this ignored the decades I’ve spent continually keeping up-to-date with Apple and its products and services. This wasn’t new: I can’t find an exact number, but I purchased my first Mac, an iBook G3, in 2001 specifically to test the then incomplete Mac OS X, and I’ve owned or used–all but three purchased with my own money–between 12 and 15 Macs. That’s more than most Mac enthusiasts, I bet.

And the MacBook Air wasn’t even my first Apple Silicon Mac, it was my third: I bought an M1-based Mac Mini in early 2021 and had previously been using an M1-based MacBook Pro 13-inch since soon thereafter. That MacBook Pro was on the older design/form factor, but the bigger issue was that it only had 8 GB of RAM. It was fine for testing, but not ideal for more regular usage.

Into the belly of the beast

While it rankles me to be reduced, I did do something different with the MacBook Air M3 in that I used it long enough to power through some of the usability issues that I’d always found difficult with macOS. These things are partly subjective and partly experiential, but the net result is that I still prefer Windows, but I can make macOS work now, especially with a select few third-party utilities to smooth out some of the edges.

OK, I did two different somethings: I dove deeper into the Apple ecosystem than I had in the past. Leading up to my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review, I went back to the iPhone 15 Pro Max briefly, intending to do the same with the Pixel 8 Pro, so that I could better evaluate the Samsung. But thanks to the coincidence of timing with my MacBook Air purchase, I ended up sticking with the iPhone for a while. And then I got AirPods Pro 2 earbuds. And then I enrolled in the Apple Developer Program so I could test the Apple Intelligence updates that start arriving later this year. And then I subscribed to the 2 TB iCloud+ tier. And then I got a 13-inch iPad Air M2. And then I bought the HomePod Pro speakers that paralleled–but were coincidental to, and not triggered by–this summer’s Sonos new app drama.

That’s a lot of money on Apple products and services in a short period of time. And despite my own sensitivity about people reducing me to their limited views and not understanding how much time and effort I spend testing alternatives, I am at least self-aware enough to understand what this looks like. And honest enough to admit that it felt weird, even to me. Still does.

That my HomePod Pro purchases and Sonos meltdown happened back-to-back is nothing but coincidental, as noted. But that wasn’t the only coincidence. I had been thinking about a way to get better and more seamless sound on our TV in Mexico for many months We had been having issues with our (Sonos) soundbar here in Pennsylvania for years, thanks to a lightning strike years ago that scrambled things in ways we apparently still deal with. In experimenting with the HomePod Pro speakers, I quickly realized that these things were too big to bring to Mexico. And then I crossed a mental divide in which I rationalized that maybe, just maybe, they would make sense to keep using here in Pennsylvania, as a replacement for the soundbar that’s never really worked right in years.

And that was a problem. On so many levels.

When worldviews collide

I spend a lot of time, too much time, trying to make things work. In many ways, things not working is at the center of my professional life. When I write about Windows or other Microsoft or third-party products and services, the focus is often on improving something. Maybe this thing solves a problem. Or maybe you’re using a thing that has a problem and there’s some fix or workaround. I joke about it, but it’s no joke: Technology fails me regularly, and a career in this field leads to nothing but heartbreak. Nothing ever works properly. I’ve never understood it.

But one rises to the challenge, I guess. This year marks my 30th anniversary in this industry, so I’ve spent three decades trying to make sense of Windows and everything around it. I’ve written 30-ish books in that time–I’ve literally lost count–and have written God knows how many articles and posts across publications both paper- and web-based. There have been ups and downs. Breakthroughs and setbacks. Wrong turns and backpedaling. All in the name of finding some truth. The answer.

This history provides a certain perspective, just as my collective experiences contribute to who I am as a person. And having been around a while, having seen some things, and experienced many others, I cope with this strange industry in different ways. I am opinionated, but I try to rationalize that by basing opinions on facts and not being too weak to not change those opinions when confronted by contrary information. Basically, I try.

When I look at our industry today, I see a lot I don’t like. Big Tech firms running roughshod over customers, partners, and competitors, expanding their power at the expense of innovation and advances that would otherwise occur. I feel strongly that the future of technology is open, not proprietary, and I view Apple’s and Google’s strenuous defenses of their abusive mobile monopolies as the final obstinate resistance to the inevitable change to come.

But my experiences this year have scrambled things. My ideals have gotten in the way of my pragmatic need for things to just work.

My embrace of Sonos was based in part on it being an open system. Not truly open like open source, but rather something that would work equally well no matter which music and audio services and hardware I used. The alternative is what I think of as a “one-way, dead-end street,” a monolithic walled garden like that most successfully offered by Apple. And it worked at some level. I could use an iPhone or an Android phone to control Sonos. I could use different apps–Spotify and, so briefly, Google Play Music–to control Sonos. I could use the Sonos app when needed to play content from services that did not support this ability, everything from Apple Music to Audible to Pocket Casts to YouTube Music.

The alternative, of course, would be the slippery slope. The walled garden. Each step taking me deeper and deeper into a warm, happy world where things just worked … but the gates shut behind me, making an exit difficult and then impossible. I avoided this world explicitly as much as possible. I could use an iPhone or iPad, but not get headphones or earbuds that only worked with Apple products, not buy speakers that only worked with Apple products, not subscribe to Apple services, most of which only worked with Apple products. OneDrive and Google Drive were both available everywhere, where iCloud (mostly) was not. This is all pretty obvious.

I was never going to buy Apple speakers. Like, ever. Why would I? They only work with Apple products. Even Sonos, for all its terribleness, now builds speakers with Bluetooth and USB-C connections so that customers have an exit strategy in which those devices aren’t bricked, aren’t suddenly useless. But Apple doesn’t do this. Its products are designed to draw you in and keep you there. One-way dead-end street.

But as strongly as I may feel about all that, there’s that “it just works” bit. The one response an Apple fan–maybe an Apple fanatic–can give to my complaints about walled gardens and one-way dead-end streets that actually resonates. Surrendering to this strategy is a surrender, for sure. But it’s also a hopefully explicit acknowledgment that life is too short, and sometimes you just need things to work so you can get on with what’s really important. Sometimes, one’s ideals get in the way. And a pragmatic, understandable need to stay out of the walled garden runs into the harsh reality that giving up on an ideal is sometimes pragmatic and understandable too.

In From the Editor’s Desk: Music (Premium), I wrote about how previously separate in-home music and video experiences merged for me in the early 1990s when our cassette player, CD player, and VHS video recorder were all connected through a component stereo system and would play through the same Bose speaker system. In today’s world, all our entertainment experiences are digital, most of them online, but we see similar integrations in things like Apple TV and Roku, or in related software experiences. We read, watch videos, listen to music, podcasts, and audiobooks, on our phones and other devices. Everything is pretty much everywhere.

But TV is still TV. There’s a shared screen. There’s sound. And that sound can come through all kinds of things. The TV itself, in which case it’s isolated from our other entertainment experiences (or not, if you use Smart TV-based apps). A soundbar or some set of connected speakers. A home theater system, perhaps. Whatever. I had settled on Sonos for this, and the Sonos Beam soundbar on our TV was both “for TV” and a part of the wider Sonos ecosystem in my home. I could play music through it, not usually by itself, but along with the other Sonos speakers.

We use an Apple TV for the TV interface. This choice was pragmatic: I’ve used every living room system imaginable, having owned more living room set-top boxes and dongles than I’ll ever remember. And Apple TV makes the most sense on several levels. The cleanest and best user interface. A minimum of advertising (nothing in the UI per se, but those typical pre-video previews you can skip). Great compatibility with the services I use. And the biggest deal, maybe: Most of the video content I’ve purchased, I’ve purchased from Apple. And for movies, that means I get the special features that Apple doesn’t provide on its Apple TV apps on other platforms. This is one of those matrix of decisions things. When you add it all up, using Apple TV makes sense. So we have one here in PA and one in Mexico.

My rationalization for HomePod speakers is that they are an extension of the Apple TV. They work seamlessly with it. They sound great, though not compared to my Sonos:5 speakers and Sonos Sub combo. But that’s fine: These things can coexist. Apple TV and HomePods for watching TV. And Sonos for music. If I can rationalize Apple TV, as I did above, I can rationalize Apple TV plus two HomePods. It’s the same thing, basically.

But it still bothered me. Still bothers me as I write this. Open vs. walled garden. Third-party vs. dominant Big Tech firm. A slippery slope leading inevitably into a one-way, dead-end street. If I was willing to take this step, how far would I go? What made sense anymore? The allure of things just working is strong. Strong enough to lose my soul to the demon?

I don’t know.

Losing my religion

Everyone is familiar with the now ancient term, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” And most would probably agree that this term, never really used this way, would have applied, may still apply, to Microsoft. Using Microsoft for work can make sense. Not always, maybe: I feel like Google is the more obvious choice for smaller businesses. But certainly at scale. Its wealth is based entirely on this reality.

But what about Apple? Where Microsoft makes sense for businesses, is there an argument to be made that Apple serves the same role for consumers? After all, Microsoft has notably failed again and again in trying to reach consumers, and it appears to have almost given up in recent years.

Maybe.

The thing is, there’s another theme that’s come up again and again over the years. And this one is about whether it’s better to choose products and services from companies that do just that one thing–Dropbox for cloud storage, perhaps, or Spotify for music–rather than going with a Big Tech firm that has its fingers in innumerable pies. There are arguments to be made on both sides. A company like Dropbox is theoretically more likely to be “better” at cloud storage, since that’s their entire point, and their success depends on it. But a company like Apple or Microsoft, with nearly infinite funds, can afford to do things smaller companies cannot. And let’s acknowledge that their predatory, protectionist business practices can lead to short-term advantages like lower prices.

There’s no obvious answer there. We just know that Apple Music would not exist if it weren’t for Spotify. And that Apple Music wouldn’t be affordable or as good as a service if Apple wasn’t so rich and could afford to subsidize it. The question for the consumer, for us, is whether any of that matters. If you’re so deep in the Apple ecosystem because, yes, it just works, then paying for an Apple One subscription that includes Apple Music at some point becomes both obvious and inevitable, and that’s when your brain shuts off. It doesn’t matter what Spotify does. There’s no version of this story where it makes sense to even consider changing again.

Obviously, I’m trying to avoid all that. My view, still, is that we should each evaluate whatever products and services we use on whatever merits, and we should weigh the constituent parts according to our individual needs. Many who do this with regard to the music service example I’m using here will choose Spotify. Many, Apple hardware fans to a one, will choose Apple Music. Some will choose whatever other service. (I’ve been using YouTube Music, for example.)

I’m at a crossroads with these things. As I dive deeper into the Apple ecosystem, I see good and bad. The HomePod speakers make some sense as an Apple TV adjacent thing, but they violate my desire to use things that are open and cross-platform and are still vaguely troubling. The iPhone makes tons of sense, but I will keep moving between Pixel and iPhone, because I love that too. The iPad is the only tablet that makes sense, period. My experiments with iCloud+ have been mostly negative, in part (I’m sure) because I use Windows: My photo collection upload took well over two weeks, which is ridiculous.

Is it reasonable to use Apple Music? It offers Dolby Atmos and lossless sound quality that Spotify and YouTube Music lack. I’m already using Apple for videos and TV. It seems to make some sense. But I don’t like the interface, don’t like it as much as YouTube Music, which has other advantages. I don’t know. I haven’t made that change. I probably won’t.

My daughter called a few months back to ask about getting a replacement for some old headphones that had died, and I assumed she’d want some AirPods since she’s an iPhone user. But she didn’t like how easily they fell out of her ears, and the Beats Solo 4 headphones had just come out, so I used the trade-in from her older phone to pay for a pair. She loves them, and in speaking with her about them, I looked into getting a pair of Beats Studio Pro headphones, because they support ANC noise cancelation.

This is another coincidence. We fly a lot, usually to Mexico. We have two big trips coming up. And I do not want to lose my earbuds on a plane because the damn things do fall out too easily, and when they bounce on the floor, they bounce erratically, like a football. I had been thinking about a proper pair of headphones for a long time.

So I bought a pair of Beats Studio Pro headphones. If it’s not obvious, this company is owned by Apple. But unlike its AirPods-branded products, Beats are cross-platform. They work as well with Android and Windows as they do with iPhone and Mac. They ship with a USB-C charging cable that can also be used for sound from a phone or PC, and because the headphones have a DAC (digital to audio converter) built-in, they support lossless audio (in addition to Dolby Atmos). Beats is an Apple brand. But it is not a one-way, dead-end street.

I’m rationalizing. A bit.

Maybe this is where it ends, maybe not. I know that I am sticking with Windows. That I’m fluid when it comes to the apps and services I use there. And that Apple makes some sense on the consumer side. But then so does Google, and my recent Pixel 9 Pro XL purchase is a timely reminder of that. It’s a terrific smartphone. There are things I miss when I’m using an iPhone. And things I miss now that I’m not. Nothing is perfect.

Indeed, that might be the only truth in all this. Nothing is perfect. It’s up to us to decide when we’re going to accept compromises and give in, and when we’re going to fight for our ideals. I’m still working through it.