The world we live in today is all about mobile computing. You can be on your phone everywhere you go, on your tablet which is just as portable, and be pecking away on your laptop anywhere you can. Even our cars are turning into mobile hotspots and workstations. With this plethora of devices and hardware options come the obligatory choices we have to make regarding operating systems. Apple IOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry? The mobile phone operating system war has raged on for years now, and the question remains; which will I choose?
The answer is this, I refuse to choose. I want to have my cake and eat it too! It occurs to me we all live in a place where our lives are run on multiple platforms. It is a rare instance where I meet someone who is solely tied to one ecosystem when it comes to computing. We have computers with us and available to us everywhere we go, and ultimately it would be impossible for them all to run on the same platform. Would we even want them to?
Sure it would be great if they all played together nicely and maybe that day is coming. But if one system won out and obliterated the others, would no choice be a good thing? The competition for our mobile computing dollars has spurred a war of platforms that benefits us all. They have continued to give us better versions of IOS, an Android platform that is leaps and bounds better than it was 4 years ago, and a new Windows phone UI which is useful and beautiful, (if you can find someone using it to check it out).
So I refuse to choose, and I use more than one system. I am not saying I carry two or three phones in my pocket, but something along those lines.
I am not an Apple hater, and I have a lot of respect for the iPhone, which in my opinion started this mobile computing revolution. But truth be told, I carry an Android device in my pocket every day, and love to use everything Google has to offer. Although I would probably be happy rocking an iPhone too, I just won’t be carrying both.
The flip side to that is I use an iPad and I love it. It is my window into the world of Apple, and keeps me in touch with what they are doing on the mobile computing front. And it comes in handy when you work online all day. There are those instances when I need to see what all the iPhone users in the office are playing with on their phones, while still enabling me to keep my beloved Android in my pocket.
So maybe you are in the same situation. Multiple devices, multiple platforms, multiple operating systems. It seems to be the norm, rather than the exception. And maybe this is really a good thing; let the war rage on! I don’t see this changing anytime soon. In fact, I don’t think I want it to, the competition is healthy. Anyone agree?
