My Winding Road to Android

Posted June 11, 2018

I've been using Apple products in one form or another since the late 80s. My first experience hands-on experience was using a Macintosh II in 1988.

First, a bit of history...

Leading up to that I'd used a pretty good variety of computers, starting with the venerable TI-99/4A in 1982 in a "keyboarding" class at my local community college (yes, I was only nine at the time and by far the youngest student in the class - it was a night school class that my dad drove me to).

I got my first home computer for Christmas in 1983. It was the brand new Coleco Adam and used cassette tapes for storage. Unlike many options at the time, it came with a somewhat functional printer. It played Coleco games, its own games (all I can remember is Buck Rogers), and had a pretty good Logo interpreter.

After that I remember lusting after the ill-fated precursor to the Mac - the Apple Lisa, a $10,000 monstrosity that was absolutely out of reach for this mere mortal child. Instead, my next and first real computer was the Commodore 128, a higher memory, business-oriented but fully compatible version of the C64. It wasn't long before the Amiga came around and I got my hands on an Amiga 500 as soon as I could. Most of my teen years were spent on Amigas, from the original 500, to an Amiga 2000, an Amiga 1200, and finally my last Amiga was the monolithic Amiga 3000T. I dabbled in the PC world during this time as well, but my heart was Amiga through and through. More on that another day.

Back to the Mac in 1988. Somehow I came across an opportunity with Odessa College to help them with their Amiga-based campus-wide information display system. This was basically a PowerPoint slideshow on loop that played on CCTVs throughout the campus displaying information and events for students. I honestly can't remember how this happened, but somehow they found out I was an Amiga enthusiast and needed someone to design and update the slides and maintain the system. As a 15-year-old computer nerd, they didn't have to ask twice. On top of getting to wander around the same college campus I took my first keyboarding class and would attend my first college courses several years later, they wanted to pay me. I had to ride my bike several miles each way but it was well worth it. After working there for a while, I was asked if I could handle creating the monthly paper newsletters that were currently being published on a new machine that few people had any experience with - the Apple Macintosh II. I remember accepting this without hesitation, despite having never touched an actual Macintosh. I figured the Mac II was 68000-based (the same processor family used in the Amigas) and had a GUI, so how hard could it be. The first newsletter was definitely a challenge. I couldn't tell you now what the software used was, but I had to learn how to use it from scratch, on my own, without the internet. I loved it, and that experience helped shape my attitude towards getting things done for the rest of my life. I'm extremely thankful to that person who gave a 15-year-old a chance.

Fast forwarding a bit to my first iPhone, the original 3G. Before 2010, I'd used a variety of phones, mostly dumb or Palm-based, like the Treo. This was a huge change for me and, to be honest, I was hooked from the moment I played with it. I had messed with the Android devices of the time (based on v2.1) and they felt like and looked like crap comparatively. Esthetics and consistency matter a lot to me, so the iPhone was the clear winner at the time.

Since the 3G, I've had a 4, a 5, and my final iPhone was the 6. (The cadence of my upgrades never landed me on an "S" device.) I've also had my fair share of iPads (including the first one, the original 3 right before they released the 3 with the lightning connector, and a mini) and, most recently, an Apple Watch Series 2.

Apple first began to irritate me when the second version of the iPad 3 came out. At this point in my life, I was still attracted to the latest and greatest and having a newer version come out within months of getting a shiny new 3 really irked me.

The general high cost of new devices and the frequency in which they were released began to take its toll by the time I got the iPhone 6. I was still fully on-board the wagon, though, as I salivated over the Watch, yet waited until the second release, knowing it would be coming soon.

Honestly I loved my Apple Watch Series 2 and if it were fully compatible with Android, I'd probably still have it. That said, however, I do think it was more of a distraction than a life changer and the release of the Series 3 before the new had worn off my Series 2 was just another turn-off. Despite how cool it sounds, I really don't need to make calls or send texts from my watch.

More than that, I don't need to drop another $1k on it.

While I was loving my Watch, I was beginning to hate my iPhone 6. Yes, it was aging but it did what I wanted/needed. Instead of continuing to operate as it should, it began to feel slower and slower. I knew I wasn't imagining it and the eventual confirmation from Apple that they were degrading performance because of the battery age was the nail in the coffin for me. I had been looking to upgrade, finally, to a 7 or even a 6S, but even these were exorbitantly expensive in my mind. (The iPhone 8 and X are so over the top for me, those weren't even on my radar.)

Due to other things going on in my life in 2017, I started getting rid of any and every unnecessary recurring expense I could, so no, financing or paying a monthly fee for a new phone was not an option either.

A couple of months ago I started seriously looking at Android phones. At first I checked the new ones thinking they'd be cheaper, but was surprised that they weren't by much. The Samsung flagship at the time, the Galaxy S8) was way more than I wanted to spend. It seems over the past few years everyone has gone the finance-your-life-away method. ("For less than a cup of Starbucks a day...")

After quite a bit of research and fence-sitting, I decided upon a good Android-based phone I could start with that had plenty of power, capacity, and the latest OS - a Motorola X4. I purchased it, a case, a screen protector, and a replacement for my Watch (a Misfit Phase) for about the same amount I sold my Apple Watch Series 2 for - $300.

I've been using this for over a month now and I'm absolutely loving it. Performance-wise, it's way faster than my comparable generation iPhone 6. Other things about the OS blew me away, too. Things that I never would have thought of - like LastPass actually integrates with everything and is useful now. (If you use LastPass on iOS it's basically a locked notepad - you have to copy and paste from it, it doesn't integrate with your browser much less applications.) Tethering and bluetooth connections don't require re-connecting constantly. Lots of little things like that, but they add up and truly make a difference.

I know I was pretty deep in the cult and would have never believed how amazing the Android OS has gotten until I finally made the plunge. I'm still surrounded by fruit believers and they don't know what they're missing.

I no longer believe that there is anything an iPhone can do that an Android can't.