HTC Hero vs. Apple iPhone ~ A Mac User's Perspective
Here's the deal: I'm (mostly) a Mac user. I'm not one of those terrible fanatic fan-girls, but as a designer, former Apple technical support specialist, and a creative, Mac has been where it's at for me for quite some time. The right brain GUI and *nix technology foundation have made it the right choice for me for years. It was natural that I would branch out into other Apple products, like the iPod and the iPhone.
When the 3G came out, I upgraded. I'd been with AT&T/Cingular for years, and my old Motorola Razr had finally bit it. I had an iPhone for a year and a half.
And I don't miss it at all.
******
The Provider:
I'm now over at Sprint, where my signal is equal in the suburbs/rural areas I work in, and better in the cities I play in. And I'm paying half the monthly bill, because Sprint doesn't charge separately for data, voice, and messaging.
So let's cover that first. Thing is, nearly everyone I speak to now carries a cell phone. I have less than a dozen landline numbers in my phone book, and the 400 minutes a month I have for those easily covers it. (It helps that nights/weekends, which are free, start at 7pm) Calling other cell phones, regardless of carrier? Unlimited SMS/MMS messaging? Unlimited data transfer and web browsing? All covered.
I had an interesting experience at the end with AT&T, when I gave them the opportunity to defend themselves. I walked into a local store, explained that I was looking at leaving for Sprint, and offered them the chance to retain a loyal 7-year customer. I got stunned silence when I explained the plan I was looking at from Sprint, because it couldn't be beat. I even called central sales/customer service, and gave them a shot. Both of them actually told me to leave, because I was getting a far superior package with Sprint. The central sales rep tried to keep me exclusively because it would mean giving up my precious iPhone.
*****
The Sales and Update Experiences:
So I went to see Shane King at Sprint. He and I had already spoken about potential things I needed to do with a phone ~ at least what the iPhone could do, and I'd prefer it to do better. I walked in, he gave me a simple set of choices, and answered every nit-picking question I had.
Shane and I have known each other for a long time, and I trust him to do right by me as a customer. He's never failed on that. The phone itself is well priced for the market, and Shane's known for little touches ~ like filling out the rebate forms and even addressing the envelope. Couldn't be easier to get my discount. When they didn't have the SD card size I wanted in stock, he ordered it for cheaper than I'd have gotten it elsewhere and called me when it came in.
Shane also offered the full range of accessories every phone needs ~ headset, case, protective screen cover, etc. When he didn't have specifically what I wanted, he offered to order it. For things he couldn't get, he acknowledged my desire to go elsewhere for them without being pushy. It was a far superior phone buying experience than I'd had with AT&T a year and a half ago, where I was alternatively ignored and hard-sold on things I didn't need.
My sole gripe with HTC is that it only updates natively with Windows. But that was also an easily solved problem ~ just bring it in to Sprint. They even asked if I’d backed up my data first, just to be safe. 15 minutes later, I was handed my updated phone with no hassles, and virtually no waiting.
******
The Phone Comparison:
The second biggest reason for the switch was the Apple insanity of lawsuits, restrictions, and drama surrounding applications. I'd gotten terribly sick of the drama and restrictions of the SDK, and the general "Big Brother" feel that Apple had going for it. I loved Apple because it was all about innovation and freedom. It stopped being that way, and I stopped loving it. I hate when companies decide they are the sole answer, and that I should conform. Always have.
Android is so open-source it's a little chaotic. Developers are encouraged to customize, reinvent, and alter anything they can find from the SDK for Android.
The Apple philosophy has something to do with making things easy. That's fine and well if you need only one option ~ hell, the computers input (touchpad/mouse) only has one button. The phone is much the same: it has one central button, and the only thing that button does is bring you back to the home screen. I like options - I own a three-button trackball mouse, because my technology should work for me, not me for it.
In much the same way, the Hero makes my life easier. The Sense UI gives me seven screens, comparable to the iPhone, to work with. Those screens can easily be customized through Scenes, which give me seven configurations of the UI to work with. The phone comes programmed with several stock Scenes to choose from and their potential applications and widgets (travel, social, etc). But I'm even more demanding ~ I want a single setup that gives me everything I loved about the iPhone, and none of what I didn't.
The first big advantage is the idea of multiple buttons. I still have a "home" button, but I also have a menu, back, and search function, and real dial/end buttons (no more hanging up a call with my cheek). I can get to my keyboard (only slightly smaller, and with better word recognition than iPhone), settings, notifications (if I don't want to use the "window shade"), add widgets or alter scenes, get to the last six apps I used almost instantly.
Let's talk about the "window shade." This is a feature of Android that probably kills my love for the iPhone by itself. All of my notifications ~ email, SMS, phone status, tasks, Navigator, music, etc., are sitting in one place, and it's out of the way, on the top of the phone screen. If I want to get at it, all I do is swipe it down. Each notification automatically connects to the relevant application, and I can take care of whatever it happens to be. The same is true for mounting my SD card, or quickly changing common settings (wifi, bluetooth, etc) through an app that takes advantage of this feature.
There's something else unique in the Hero from the iPhone: widgets. For Mac users already familiar with the Dashboard, it's the same thing. That's right: I don't have to open my calendar to see if I have an appointment tomorrow ~ there's a widget for that. For things that don't have widgets, you can easily display a 1x1 shortcut (the way the iPhone displays everything), so it's all right on your main seven screens. I do this for all of my apps, because I'm used to being able to see everything. And with the 2.1 update, seeing everything is even easier - I just tap the “home” button from the main screen, and I can see all seven screens at once.
I get to set my notifications and ring tones to whatever I want without having to root the phone, or go through another application. Just mount the SD card, drop things in the appropriate folder, and we're done. Unlike my iPhone, which had six SMS sounds, and because five of them were horrific, everyone only used one - and we all looked like tools reaching for our phones when one went off. Even jailbroken, you had to replace them by the original file name, which meant remembering which sound was which. None of that here ~ have as many as you like, by their real name, in formats well beyond iPhone's proprietary m4r.
Haptic feedback is quickly becoming another favorite feature. It's a vibration notifier for things like widget removal, key presses, and a few games I've tried. It lets me know I've done something without making some obnoxious sound when I'm with a client, and that's handy.
I can edit the dictionary, and I can’t tell you how valuable that is. If you made a mistake on the iPhone and hit the spacebar, it lived in your dictionary forever. Now, I can fix that for errors that get accepted, or pre-load a list of common to me (but not the rest of the world) words, like specific usernames or locations.
The last big thing that the Hero does and the iPhone doesn't? Social network integration. I can tie my contacts to their Facebook profiles or Flickr accounts. It optionally pulls public birth dates, profile photos, and status updates through to their place in my stock People app. Coordinating that with the ability to post birthdays to my calendar on the phone (through Google), and I never miss a birthday again.
*****
The Applications/Widgets:
Like the iPhone, I can acquire applications that will replace many of the stock ones, if I don't like them. The Hero does have some shortcomings for me personally, and each of those has since been eliminated. The upside? I haven't paid for a single application yet, and I haven't had to "jailbreak"/root my phone to get at them.
In the two months or so I've owned the Hero, I've replaced and tweaked a lot of what was comfortable for me to make the jump from iPhone. The big ones:
Handcent SMS: a replacement for the stock Messages app. This allows me to fully customize, individually (or universally), the conversations and notification settings of my SMS contacts. Yes, it's ad supported, but the only time I see those ads is in the "settings" panel, and that's just brilliant. Hell, "iPhone" is a style of conversation that's available, if I was so inclined. I also have the ability to call a contact from the SMS conversation without scrolling anywhere, and pop-up notification for texts (which I had to jailbreak to get on the iPhone).
ColorNote: A replacement for the stock Notes application. The big deal here is that notes are color-coded, which helps my right-brain leanings considerably, since my life is color-coded. I also get checklists as an option here, and the first of the awesome widgets ~ each note can be displayed, as a 1x1 widget, on my desktop. I don't have to root around or scroll for my shopping list.
Astrid: On the iPhone, I was a user of Appigo's To Do, an application that had a $10 price tag. Astrid is the same GTD-style program, with improvements, for free. The only thing it doesn’t do that To Do did is sub-tasking, which will come out in the 3.0 release, and is easily solved by tags (with or without Remember The Milk, its synced service). An adorable icon and reminders with attitude are great. The widget(!) is a 2x2 display of tasks in whatever order I like (date/priority, etc). Did I mention I didn't pay for this?
Sprint Navigation: I travel for work. Often, it's to some semi-remote town I've never been to. The maps program is run by Google, but the better choice is Sprint Navigation (covered by my data plan). After years of not owning a GPS device and relying on Google Maps, I'm hooked. It refreshes every 10 seconds, reroutes when I screw up my turn, and gives me options for avoiding traffic jams. My only gripe is that I can't simultaneous play my music and still interact with the Navigation program. But I can tuck it into window shade and re-open it if I only need help once I'm in a particular city.
Music: The iPod was, of course, integrated into the iPhone. The Hero's stock Music application has some issues with things I'm used to from Apple, like Playlist syncing from my desktop. This is easily solved with a 3rd party, open source, Android friendly application called DoubleTwist. It pulls from iTunes, so my music stays where it was.
Dolphin: I hate Safari (iPhone/Mac). My desktop uses Firefox, and the Android browser Dolphin is about as close to Firefox as can be done on a mobile, a much better choice for me over the stock Browser, solely for tabs. The major improvement is the notion of "gestures," which are finger movements on the screen tied to actions (like copying text or bookmarking). It also supports Flash. Apple doesn't, so no more broken multimedia websites for me.
Calendar: I'm using CalWidget, in conjunction with Google Calendar. It gives me, in a widget (with over a dozen size options), the next several upcoming events through an agenda view. Because iCal syncs to Google as well, I'm integrated all the way through. Doesn't happen from the iPhone, where all I get is the current date.
QuickSettings: This is the widget I hacked my iPhone to get. A simple, easily accessed toolbar that lets me change common things, from bluetooth, wifi, and GPS toggles, screen times, and even a flashlight. It also lets me know where my memory storage is at, and how much battery I have left.
TaskManager/ASTRO/Uninstaller: Essentially, this combo of apps lets me control what my phone is up to. I can kill background running applications (something the iPhone doesn't worry about, because it can only run one at a time), look through the files and folders on my SD card, and uninstall things without having to go into the Android Market to do it. Unlike iTunes, which keeps everything and constantly tells me to reinstall it.
aCar: The iPhone may have Car Care and Gas Cubby, but the minimum price tag there is $5. aCar? Free. Track fill-ups, service, get reminders, and see more statistics and charts than you ever thought you needed about your vehicle.
I'm skipping over games as a category, but there are plenty of good ones (like Mystique, a serialized horror game), and all the stock games you'd expect are present, like crossword puzzles, sudoku, minesweeper, etc.
If you're one of those folk who is interested in Twitter, mobile TV, NFL, NASCAR, or geo-tagging... it does all of those things fairly well.
******
The Gripes:
Like I said, I'm not really the fan-girl type. The Hero has some other issues that I've either learned to live with, or patched somehow:
Ring Lag Time: The typical lag time from an incoming call was over 2 rings out of the box. That's insane, and leads to a lot of missed calls. I've cut that down to the "within the first ring" range that is pretty standard by disabling roaming alerts in the settings function. I have no idea why this fixes it, but it does.
Screenshots: I'm stupidly visually oriented. The only function I've found that the Hero won't do unrooted is take a screenshot. If I were to root my phone, this problem would be easily solved.
Stock Apps: Like the iPhone, the Hero has a few things on it out of the box that I just don't care about. For the iPhone, I had to shove them on the last available screen and ignore them. On the Hero, they just don’t get space on my screens.
Android Market: While the Market on the phone isn’t quite as pretty as it was on the iPhone, it’s considerably better. But it’s actually DoubleTwist that saves the day by giving me the same Market format as Apple’s Store.
******
The Privacy issue:
One of the biggest concerns I have, as a former white-hat hacker and generally smart online consumer is the notion of personal information privacy.
Synchronization with the iPhone left me using MobileMe, their proprietary (paid) cloud service, if I wanted multiple location or online accessibility. For the Hero, I'm given the choice of Exchange/Outlook, or Google.
To even my surprise, I chose Google. Here's why:
As a Mac user, going through the MS programs seems odd, but I'm only mostly Mac. Due to Apple's business decisions in the last year, I've gone back to cross-platform, and own a PC running a sleeker version of XP. So it's a valid option. But when it came to privacy concerns... Microsoft is actually worse than Facebook. Microsoft's Privacy Policy in a sentence: all information is permanently uniquely identified, for themselves and their "trusted partners.”
Google, on the other hand, has an equally complex set of privacy policies, but openly state that they remove the unique identifiers after a certain time period (it varies by service, the average is 45 days save searches, which is significantly longer).
As data mining is pretty standard, I don't have much issue with it in aggregate format. But uniquely identified bothers me more than a little bit.
(Hell, it's the same reason I'm considering leaving Facebook)
*****
I'll miss Apple. But not that Apple that is - the one that was, back when Steve Jobs' answer to building market share was to build a better product, to innovate, and to frankly step outside the box.
When the i-Brand became the box, it was all downhill from there.
So I've gone elsewhere, at least for my smartphone... and I haven't looked back once.
~Samantha
When the 3G came out, I upgraded. I'd been with AT&T/Cingular for years, and my old Motorola Razr had finally bit it. I had an iPhone for a year and a half.
And I don't miss it at all.
******
The Provider:
I'm now over at Sprint, where my signal is equal in the suburbs/rural areas I work in, and better in the cities I play in. And I'm paying half the monthly bill, because Sprint doesn't charge separately for data, voice, and messaging.
So let's cover that first. Thing is, nearly everyone I speak to now carries a cell phone. I have less than a dozen landline numbers in my phone book, and the 400 minutes a month I have for those easily covers it. (It helps that nights/weekends, which are free, start at 7pm) Calling other cell phones, regardless of carrier? Unlimited SMS/MMS messaging? Unlimited data transfer and web browsing? All covered.
I had an interesting experience at the end with AT&T, when I gave them the opportunity to defend themselves. I walked into a local store, explained that I was looking at leaving for Sprint, and offered them the chance to retain a loyal 7-year customer. I got stunned silence when I explained the plan I was looking at from Sprint, because it couldn't be beat. I even called central sales/customer service, and gave them a shot. Both of them actually told me to leave, because I was getting a far superior package with Sprint. The central sales rep tried to keep me exclusively because it would mean giving up my precious iPhone.
*****
The Sales and Update Experiences:
So I went to see Shane King at Sprint. He and I had already spoken about potential things I needed to do with a phone ~ at least what the iPhone could do, and I'd prefer it to do better. I walked in, he gave me a simple set of choices, and answered every nit-picking question I had.
Shane and I have known each other for a long time, and I trust him to do right by me as a customer. He's never failed on that. The phone itself is well priced for the market, and Shane's known for little touches ~ like filling out the rebate forms and even addressing the envelope. Couldn't be easier to get my discount. When they didn't have the SD card size I wanted in stock, he ordered it for cheaper than I'd have gotten it elsewhere and called me when it came in.
Shane also offered the full range of accessories every phone needs ~ headset, case, protective screen cover, etc. When he didn't have specifically what I wanted, he offered to order it. For things he couldn't get, he acknowledged my desire to go elsewhere for them without being pushy. It was a far superior phone buying experience than I'd had with AT&T a year and a half ago, where I was alternatively ignored and hard-sold on things I didn't need.
My sole gripe with HTC is that it only updates natively with Windows. But that was also an easily solved problem ~ just bring it in to Sprint. They even asked if I’d backed up my data first, just to be safe. 15 minutes later, I was handed my updated phone with no hassles, and virtually no waiting.
******
The Phone Comparison:
The second biggest reason for the switch was the Apple insanity of lawsuits, restrictions, and drama surrounding applications. I'd gotten terribly sick of the drama and restrictions of the SDK, and the general "Big Brother" feel that Apple had going for it. I loved Apple because it was all about innovation and freedom. It stopped being that way, and I stopped loving it. I hate when companies decide they are the sole answer, and that I should conform. Always have.
Android is so open-source it's a little chaotic. Developers are encouraged to customize, reinvent, and alter anything they can find from the SDK for Android.
The Apple philosophy has something to do with making things easy. That's fine and well if you need only one option ~ hell, the computers input (touchpad/mouse) only has one button. The phone is much the same: it has one central button, and the only thing that button does is bring you back to the home screen. I like options - I own a three-button trackball mouse, because my technology should work for me, not me for it.
In much the same way, the Hero makes my life easier. The Sense UI gives me seven screens, comparable to the iPhone, to work with. Those screens can easily be customized through Scenes, which give me seven configurations of the UI to work with. The phone comes programmed with several stock Scenes to choose from and their potential applications and widgets (travel, social, etc). But I'm even more demanding ~ I want a single setup that gives me everything I loved about the iPhone, and none of what I didn't.
The first big advantage is the idea of multiple buttons. I still have a "home" button, but I also have a menu, back, and search function, and real dial/end buttons (no more hanging up a call with my cheek). I can get to my keyboard (only slightly smaller, and with better word recognition than iPhone), settings, notifications (if I don't want to use the "window shade"), add widgets or alter scenes, get to the last six apps I used almost instantly.
Let's talk about the "window shade." This is a feature of Android that probably kills my love for the iPhone by itself. All of my notifications ~ email, SMS, phone status, tasks, Navigator, music, etc., are sitting in one place, and it's out of the way, on the top of the phone screen. If I want to get at it, all I do is swipe it down. Each notification automatically connects to the relevant application, and I can take care of whatever it happens to be. The same is true for mounting my SD card, or quickly changing common settings (wifi, bluetooth, etc) through an app that takes advantage of this feature.
There's something else unique in the Hero from the iPhone: widgets. For Mac users already familiar with the Dashboard, it's the same thing. That's right: I don't have to open my calendar to see if I have an appointment tomorrow ~ there's a widget for that. For things that don't have widgets, you can easily display a 1x1 shortcut (the way the iPhone displays everything), so it's all right on your main seven screens. I do this for all of my apps, because I'm used to being able to see everything. And with the 2.1 update, seeing everything is even easier - I just tap the “home” button from the main screen, and I can see all seven screens at once.
I get to set my notifications and ring tones to whatever I want without having to root the phone, or go through another application. Just mount the SD card, drop things in the appropriate folder, and we're done. Unlike my iPhone, which had six SMS sounds, and because five of them were horrific, everyone only used one - and we all looked like tools reaching for our phones when one went off. Even jailbroken, you had to replace them by the original file name, which meant remembering which sound was which. None of that here ~ have as many as you like, by their real name, in formats well beyond iPhone's proprietary m4r.
Haptic feedback is quickly becoming another favorite feature. It's a vibration notifier for things like widget removal, key presses, and a few games I've tried. It lets me know I've done something without making some obnoxious sound when I'm with a client, and that's handy.
I can edit the dictionary, and I can’t tell you how valuable that is. If you made a mistake on the iPhone and hit the spacebar, it lived in your dictionary forever. Now, I can fix that for errors that get accepted, or pre-load a list of common to me (but not the rest of the world) words, like specific usernames or locations.
The last big thing that the Hero does and the iPhone doesn't? Social network integration. I can tie my contacts to their Facebook profiles or Flickr accounts. It optionally pulls public birth dates, profile photos, and status updates through to their place in my stock People app. Coordinating that with the ability to post birthdays to my calendar on the phone (through Google), and I never miss a birthday again.
*****
The Applications/Widgets:
Like the iPhone, I can acquire applications that will replace many of the stock ones, if I don't like them. The Hero does have some shortcomings for me personally, and each of those has since been eliminated. The upside? I haven't paid for a single application yet, and I haven't had to "jailbreak"/root my phone to get at them.
In the two months or so I've owned the Hero, I've replaced and tweaked a lot of what was comfortable for me to make the jump from iPhone. The big ones:
Handcent SMS: a replacement for the stock Messages app. This allows me to fully customize, individually (or universally), the conversations and notification settings of my SMS contacts. Yes, it's ad supported, but the only time I see those ads is in the "settings" panel, and that's just brilliant. Hell, "iPhone" is a style of conversation that's available, if I was so inclined. I also have the ability to call a contact from the SMS conversation without scrolling anywhere, and pop-up notification for texts (which I had to jailbreak to get on the iPhone).
ColorNote: A replacement for the stock Notes application. The big deal here is that notes are color-coded, which helps my right-brain leanings considerably, since my life is color-coded. I also get checklists as an option here, and the first of the awesome widgets ~ each note can be displayed, as a 1x1 widget, on my desktop. I don't have to root around or scroll for my shopping list.
Astrid: On the iPhone, I was a user of Appigo's To Do, an application that had a $10 price tag. Astrid is the same GTD-style program, with improvements, for free. The only thing it doesn’t do that To Do did is sub-tasking, which will come out in the 3.0 release, and is easily solved by tags (with or without Remember The Milk, its synced service). An adorable icon and reminders with attitude are great. The widget(!) is a 2x2 display of tasks in whatever order I like (date/priority, etc). Did I mention I didn't pay for this?
Sprint Navigation: I travel for work. Often, it's to some semi-remote town I've never been to. The maps program is run by Google, but the better choice is Sprint Navigation (covered by my data plan). After years of not owning a GPS device and relying on Google Maps, I'm hooked. It refreshes every 10 seconds, reroutes when I screw up my turn, and gives me options for avoiding traffic jams. My only gripe is that I can't simultaneous play my music and still interact with the Navigation program. But I can tuck it into window shade and re-open it if I only need help once I'm in a particular city.
Music: The iPod was, of course, integrated into the iPhone. The Hero's stock Music application has some issues with things I'm used to from Apple, like Playlist syncing from my desktop. This is easily solved with a 3rd party, open source, Android friendly application called DoubleTwist. It pulls from iTunes, so my music stays where it was.
Dolphin: I hate Safari (iPhone/Mac). My desktop uses Firefox, and the Android browser Dolphin is about as close to Firefox as can be done on a mobile, a much better choice for me over the stock Browser, solely for tabs. The major improvement is the notion of "gestures," which are finger movements on the screen tied to actions (like copying text or bookmarking). It also supports Flash. Apple doesn't, so no more broken multimedia websites for me.
Calendar: I'm using CalWidget, in conjunction with Google Calendar. It gives me, in a widget (with over a dozen size options), the next several upcoming events through an agenda view. Because iCal syncs to Google as well, I'm integrated all the way through. Doesn't happen from the iPhone, where all I get is the current date.
QuickSettings: This is the widget I hacked my iPhone to get. A simple, easily accessed toolbar that lets me change common things, from bluetooth, wifi, and GPS toggles, screen times, and even a flashlight. It also lets me know where my memory storage is at, and how much battery I have left.
TaskManager/ASTRO/Uninstaller: Essentially, this combo of apps lets me control what my phone is up to. I can kill background running applications (something the iPhone doesn't worry about, because it can only run one at a time), look through the files and folders on my SD card, and uninstall things without having to go into the Android Market to do it. Unlike iTunes, which keeps everything and constantly tells me to reinstall it.
aCar: The iPhone may have Car Care and Gas Cubby, but the minimum price tag there is $5. aCar? Free. Track fill-ups, service, get reminders, and see more statistics and charts than you ever thought you needed about your vehicle.
I'm skipping over games as a category, but there are plenty of good ones (like Mystique, a serialized horror game), and all the stock games you'd expect are present, like crossword puzzles, sudoku, minesweeper, etc.
If you're one of those folk who is interested in Twitter, mobile TV, NFL, NASCAR, or geo-tagging... it does all of those things fairly well.
******
The Gripes:
Like I said, I'm not really the fan-girl type. The Hero has some other issues that I've either learned to live with, or patched somehow:
Ring Lag Time: The typical lag time from an incoming call was over 2 rings out of the box. That's insane, and leads to a lot of missed calls. I've cut that down to the "within the first ring" range that is pretty standard by disabling roaming alerts in the settings function. I have no idea why this fixes it, but it does.
Screenshots: I'm stupidly visually oriented. The only function I've found that the Hero won't do unrooted is take a screenshot. If I were to root my phone, this problem would be easily solved.
Stock Apps: Like the iPhone, the Hero has a few things on it out of the box that I just don't care about. For the iPhone, I had to shove them on the last available screen and ignore them. On the Hero, they just don’t get space on my screens.
Android Market: While the Market on the phone isn’t quite as pretty as it was on the iPhone, it’s considerably better. But it’s actually DoubleTwist that saves the day by giving me the same Market format as Apple’s Store.
******
The Privacy issue:
One of the biggest concerns I have, as a former white-hat hacker and generally smart online consumer is the notion of personal information privacy.
Synchronization with the iPhone left me using MobileMe, their proprietary (paid) cloud service, if I wanted multiple location or online accessibility. For the Hero, I'm given the choice of Exchange/Outlook, or Google.
To even my surprise, I chose Google. Here's why:
As a Mac user, going through the MS programs seems odd, but I'm only mostly Mac. Due to Apple's business decisions in the last year, I've gone back to cross-platform, and own a PC running a sleeker version of XP. So it's a valid option. But when it came to privacy concerns... Microsoft is actually worse than Facebook. Microsoft's Privacy Policy in a sentence: all information is permanently uniquely identified, for themselves and their "trusted partners.”
Google, on the other hand, has an equally complex set of privacy policies, but openly state that they remove the unique identifiers after a certain time period (it varies by service, the average is 45 days save searches, which is significantly longer).
As data mining is pretty standard, I don't have much issue with it in aggregate format. But uniquely identified bothers me more than a little bit.
(Hell, it's the same reason I'm considering leaving Facebook)
*****
I'll miss Apple. But not that Apple that is - the one that was, back when Steve Jobs' answer to building market share was to build a better product, to innovate, and to frankly step outside the box.
When the i-Brand became the box, it was all downhill from there.
So I've gone elsewhere, at least for my smartphone... and I haven't looked back once.
~Samantha