As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

[dc9super80]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

People talking about apple beekeeping bad for wanting to lock you in and Google good for making apps for everyone. You do realize that for apple to be profitable, they need to sell you hardware and for Google to be profitable, they need you to use their services. They both operate on entirely different business models. This has little to do with being good or bad.

Tapatalking on the N7....

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

In my opinion this their way to push you into their social network. And when it comes to Google plus one word comes to mind.


Gross

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To me, the one word that comes to mind when I think of Google+ is "Ghost Town." Sorry, that's two words.

doug

The thing I think that many don't understand is that social networking is just one aspect/feature of Google+. Besides social networking, it's also acts as a "hub" for many Google services; this is evident by the way that many services that were once stand-alone features (Talk, Picassa) are now being integrated into it. This doesn't mean you have "share" everything you do, and technically those services still operate the same way they did before, granted with slightly altered interfaces and feature sets, but if you do want to embrace the social aspect of it, then it's easy to do because everything is integrated.

If you want to completely ignore the "social" aspect of it, it's quite easy to do so.

And to be honest, I find Google+ as a much better social networking site than either Facebook or Twitter, the two most popular today, because it tends to combine the best of both worlds. You can choose to keep a very intimate profile shared only amongst your friends, or broadcast your messages to the public, and you can follow a lot of great public feeds. I'm not a very social networking guy myself, but I do see the value in it. Google+ hasn't been the widely adopted as social network, that's for sure, but I still really like the platform and I've actually developed a lot of "professional" contacts there that I never would have on FB.

 

[RickInHouston]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Uh, I stopped at this, "Android really needs something equivalent to iTunes. iTunes is perhaps under-appreciated. At least it was by me."

Wow, just wow. Tunes is the worst thing to happen to computing EVER.

... and, of course, this is MY opinion.

 

[bearda]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Uh, I stopped at this, "Android really needs something equivalent to iTunes. iTunes is perhaps under-appreciated. At least it was by me."

Wow, just wow. Tunes is the worst thing to happen to computing EVER.

... and, of course, this is MY opinion.

A lot of people like it. In terms of a solution to sync between a device and a music library it works pretty well. Yeah, there's a lot of bloat there. But for the average user who uses it long enough to plug in an iPod it's functional.

 

[HalizDad]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

While I am greatly enjoying the Nexus 7 so far, I think the answer to one of my original questions: "How locked am I into the Apple ecosystem" turns out to be "very locked." More than I thought.

This is all due to there not being a Mac equivalent of iTunes for the Nexus which deals with music, photo albums and backup/restores.

For example:
But this only works as long as you don't have a lot of DRM protected music purchased pre-2009 from the Apple store. If you do, you have to unlock the old purchases. I did that by burning CDs and re-importing them. Apple has a paid Match service for this, but a lot of the older purchases were NLA (no longer available) so this was the only way. Also, this only works for playlists, so you have to create playlists for whatever you want to sync. But it does work, and isn't too bad. It's quite nice actually.

Poweramp plays drm protected musics from the iTunes...I do it all the time.

 

[jamontoast1291]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

I'm a mac user, but I haven't really had any issues. I don't use iPhoto though, Picasa is much better imo. I begrudgingly still use iTunes from my years of iPods, but I use google music on my phone and besides the playlist syncing issue it seems to be a suitable replacement. I don't really sync anything else with my mac...contacts have been syncing with google since my Droid. I guess the backup thing is nice, but I use titanium backup when wiping/installing new ROMS, but besides that I never really had a need for a backup. I think for people that use and rely on iPhoto, iTunes, etc it could be a hassle, but I haven't had any problems so far.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Uh, I stopped at this, "Android really needs something equivalent to iTunes. iTunes is perhaps under-appreciated. At least it was by me."

Wow, just wow. Tunes is the worst thing to happen to computing EVER.

... and, of course, this is MY opinion.

A lot of people like it. In terms of a solution to sync between a device and a music library it works pretty well. Yeah, there's a lot of bloat there. But for the average user who uses it long enough to plug in an iPod it's functional.

I agree to a point about the sync solution, however simply as an application itself, iTunes is the worst (and has been since the iPod days). Maybe it works better on a Mac..?

 

[jerrykur]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

I agree to a point about the sync solution, however simply as an application itself, iTunes is the worst (and has been since the iPod days). Maybe it works better on a Mac..?

No it is the same $#%% on the Mac. I never use iTunes on my Macs. I don't want my PCs and tablets or phones dependent upon each other. I just upload my ripped CDs to Google Music so they are available on my devices or stream/download from Spotify Premium.

 

[Andrawer]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

"locked into the Apple ECO System?"...not hardly in my case.

I've used Apple computers continuously since '84 either as developer and typical user but also like to keep my toes into other computer environments so, like many, use apple/microsoft/google products and really don't have problems.

I don't worry about "backing up" in the least my Nexus7 (or smartphones) since I consider my iMac (itunes+iphoto) as my main repository for ALL OF my music and photos and documents. So, if I need to rebuild my tablet/smartphone devices I simply reload content via inexpensive apps like isyncr or AirDroid (etc).

I also use google+ and dropbox's auto upload features for photos/created on my tablets. I simply delete what I don't want on google+ plus and if I have images on dropbox that I want permanently it gets imported into iPhoto then deleted on dropbox. Not automatic but I don't mind.

Everyone uses their computers in different ways of course but I just wanted to point out that just because I've used APple products for literally decades I certainly am not LOCKED into Apple.

sidenote: not to state the obvious but I see Picasa referenced a lot in this thread but Google+ Photos has now replaced Picasa Web (where I used to store photos for sharing purposes). Maybe everyone meant the client version of Picasa?

 

[dicx]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

"locked into the Apple ECO System?"...not hardly in my case.

I've used Apple computers continuously since '84 either as developer and typical user but also like to keep my toes into other computer environments so, like many, use apple/microsoft/google products and really don't have problems.


I don't worry about "backing up" in the least my Nexus7 (or smartphones) since I consider my iMac (itunes+iphoto) as my main repository for ALL OF my music and photos and documents. So, if I need to rebuild my tablet/smartphone devices I simply reload content via inexpensive apps like isyncr or AirDroid (etc).

I also use google+ and dropbox's auto upload features for photos/created on my tablets. I simply delete what I don't want on google+ plus and if I have images on dropbox that I want permanently it gets imported into iPhoto then deleted on dropbox. Not automatic but I don't mind.

Everyone uses their computers in different ways of course but I just wanted to point out that just because I've used APple products for literally decades I certainly am not LOCKED into Apple.

sidenote: not to state the obvious but I see Picasa referenced a lot in this thread but Google+ Photos has now replaced Picasa Web (where I used to store photos for sharing purposes). Maybe everyone meant the client version of Picasa?

Same boat, since the 1st Macintosh. The nexus 7 is my first non Apple product. Very sunk by the eco system. The way I got out of it?

1. Google Music manager to sync with iTunes (Still use a Macbook Pro)
2. iPhoto, switched to Lightroom. I never liked it when Apple changed the photo hierarchy to a single package container. My library is over 400GB.
3. For photo back up I subscribe to smugmug.com. Unlimited full resolution pics AND movies. The Android app is so much better than the ios App. Plus Lightroom has a native plugin for syncing, iPhoto you are stuck with an exporter.
4. I do use Google drive a lot.
5. Microsoft OneNote I don't think gets the press it deserves.

I really like the nexus better than my old iPad.

 

[douglerner]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Same boat, since the 1st Macintosh. The nexus 7 is my first non Apple product. Very sunk by the eco system. The way I got out of it?

1. Google Music manager to sync with iTunes (Still use a Macbook Pro)
2. iPhoto, switched to Lightroom. I never liked it when Apple changed the photo hierarchy to a single package container. My library is over 400GB.
3. For photo back up I subscribe to smugmug.com. Unlimited full resolution pics AND movies. The Android app is so much better than the ios App. Plus Lightroom has a native plugin for syncing, iPhoto you are stuck with an exporter.
4. I do use Google drive a lot.
5. Microsoft OneNote I don't think gets the press it deserves.

I really like the nexus better than my old iPad.

Some random comments:

I am also using the Google Music manager so far. It seems sufficient for my use. It is easy to use at any rate. Of course international users have some roadblocks to using it.

Lightroom is a paid solution, isn't it?

I should check out smugmug. I do like having my own personal backup of photos and albums though. They go back decades.

What do you use OneNote for? I like using Evernote.

And about Picasa - what's the deal? I do have the client, and never used sharing. With the above-mentioned de-emphasis of Picasa in favor of Google+ what happens to albums? You can create private albums in Google+? I am hesitant about dumping stuff into a social network and just hoping it remains private.

doug

 

[Farish]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Some random comments:

I am also using the Google Music manager so far. It seems sufficient for my use. It is easy to use at any rate. Of course international users have some roadblocks to using it.

Lightroom is a paid solution, isn't it?

I should check out smugmug. I do like having my own personal backup of photos and albums though. They go back decades.

What do you use OneNote for? I like using Evernote.

And about Picasa - what's the deal? I do have the client, and never used sharing. With the above-mentioned de-emphasis of Picasa in favor of Google+ what happens to albums? You can create private albums in Google+? I am hesitant about dumping stuff into a social network and just hoping it remains private.

doug

Lightroom is paid, think of it as an advance photo management tool with photo adjustment tools on a more advance level than picasa and adobe elements. It is geared towards professional photographers and higher end hobbyists.

Might as well check out Flickr it gives you 1terabyte of photostorage plus private albums for free. Don't know how well it works, I haven't used it.

Onenote is part of the Microsoft office suite. It has been improved greatly over the years but part of the bad reputation has do with the way it was originally implemented.
I use Evernote premium and I think it is a much better solution especially with the fact to get the most out of Onenote you need an office 365 or sharepoint account for syncing.

With regards to private phootos on Google Plus

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1361948?hl=en

- - - Updated - - -

Some random comments:

I am also using the Google Music manager so far. It seems sufficient for my use. It is easy to use at any rate. Of course international users have some roadblocks to using it.

Lightroom is a paid solution, isn't it?

I should check out smugmug. I do like having my own personal backup of photos and albums though. They go back decades.

What do you use OneNote for? I like using Evernote.

And about Picasa - what's the deal? I do have the client, and never used sharing. With the above-mentioned de-emphasis of Picasa in favor of Google+ what happens to albums? You can create private albums in Google+? I am hesitant about dumping stuff into a social network and just hoping it remains private.

doug

Lightroom is paid, think of it as an advance photo management tool with photo adjustment tools on a more advance level than picasa and adobe elements. It is geared towards professional photographers and higher end hobbyists.

Might as well check out Flickr it gives you 1terabyte of photostorage plus private albums for free. Don't know how well it works, I haven't used it.

Onenote is part of the Microsoft office suite. It has been improved greatly over the years but part of the bad reputation has do with the way it was originally implemented.
I use Evernote premium and I think it is a much better solution especially with the fact to get the most out of Onenote you need an office 365 or sharepoint account for syncing.

With regards to private phootos on Google Plus

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1361948?hl=en

 

[Diknak]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Yes, Google+ is designed for sharing, but that doesn't mean that everything you put on there is for the purpose of being shared. The entire photo album section is 100% private unless you explicitly share the picture or the entire album. Nothing gets shared automatically. Facebook works the same way, but they aren't pushing and showcasing the photo storage like Google is, so that's why there seems to be a stigma with it.

In fact, if you are looking at sharing an album with certain people, Google+ is way better at doing that than any other service because when you share it, you specify the circle (like family) and/or individual people.

 

[dicx]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Lightroom costs around $79 if you have an .edu address. $134 if not. The thing I like about Lightroom is that it does not destroy your hierarchy. iPhoto makes a big library file. Lightroom just keeps a catalog file of where your photos are and then keeps another file for changes (rotations, edits, etc.)

I use One note for quick note taking and saving to sky drive. I also use the free Kingston Office app. It saves to GDrive. Just depends on your workflow which storage solution you use.

smugmug.com does have a 15 day trial. No commitment. Lightroom has a 30 day trial too.

 

[douglerner]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Yes, Google+ is designed for sharing, but that doesn't mean that everything you put on there is for the purpose of being shared. The entire photo album section is 100% private unless you explicitly share the picture or the entire album. Nothing gets shared automatically. Facebook works the same way, but they aren't pushing and showcasing the photo storage like Google is, so that's why there seems to be a stigma with it.

In fact, if you are looking at sharing an album with certain people, Google+ is way better at doing that than any other service because when you share it, you specify the circle (like family) and/or individual people.

With Facebook albums, I believe you can only share with people who are on Facebook, right? Unless there is some way of marking an album as public. I imagine there must be. I still would not want to just keep all my photos on Facebook. I would feel hesitant about the security.

I feel the same way about Google plus. To me, it just doesn't seem to be designed for that purpose. I wouldn't want to keep my entire collection of photos, some 40 GB plus of data, upon Google plus. In fact, I don't think I want to put my entire collection of photos, including all my family photos going back decades, up on the cloud somewhere necessarily. What I would like to do, is just have a convenient way of keepin certain albums on my Nexus 7.

For sharing photos, I can think of lots of ways of doing that. Including dropbox links.

For now my main interest is just having a way of syncing some photo albums to my Nexus, like I do with my iPhone or iPad.

 

[douglerner]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

I am really loving my Nexus 7. And I'm finding all sort of new discoveries about how much better sharing and the access to a file system is versus iOS. I'm amazed at some things I can do so easily on the Nexus that I just can't do in iOS.

But... I still think disentangling from the "Apple ecosystem" is difficult. It's been a week now and while I can sync my iTunes music via the Google Music Play manager (that was easy), everything else has been hard so far - finding a good way to sync photo albums, finding an easy way to sync calendars across all my devices. That still remains a bottleneck.

I'm working on it though. (I'm discussing the details of these syncs in other threads, so no need to duplicate them here. I'm just mentioning that while I love the Nexus and basically am finding Android 4.3 superior to iOS, I am still having trouble syncing between everything.)

doug

 

[Vaas]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

Thanks Doug for starting this thread, I have learned a lot from you and all the others who have posted.

Currently I am across Windows and Apple platforms, I love my windows phone/Skydrive setup, I have an Iphone4(that is now an Ipod) and IPAD2. However I have not played with android much other than on my wife's Kindle Fire, which you know is amazon's version of android. I will be getting a Nexus 7 soon, debating on wifi or waiting for LTM. I do a lot of my purchasing of music and audio books though Itunes. It is just very convenient, also I can purchase the audio book and not have it go though audible. I do not want to be forced into a subscription service for my audio books, I want to purchase them.

My question is has anyone sync audio books from Itunes to android?

Doug - I would grateful if you could expand on your experience little, for those of us new to android as well. I would like to here what you have discovered that you can do, also what are some of the things you can do on the Nexus that you could not in iOS.

thanks

 

[douglerner]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

As a new Android user I am discovering new things I can do every day that I cannot do in iOS. For example, it may sound like a small thing, but it's indicative, I think, of the more open Android system and the ability of developers to code for it. In the Facebook app, suppose I see an image in a post I want to email to a friend. I must do the following:

1. Touch the image to open it.
2. Long touch to save to the camera roll.
3. Go into Photos > camera roll and select the photo.
4. Mail the photo from there. And when I'm done I'm left with the photo in the camera roll.

In Android 4.3 on the Nexus, I can simply touch the image in Facebook and then touch the sharing symbol, touch Share and up pops a page of choices letting me do all these things: Add to DropBox, Amazon send to Kindle, open up in a graphics app I installed called AVG Image Shrinker, send to Box, send to Copy, send to Google Drive, create an Evernote note, share on Facebook and much more. One of the options is Gmail - so I can just email the photo directly. No need to go through all the steps I must in iOS.

There are lots of things like that throughout the UI. Another example I love is you can send any file as attachments in Mail. In the Mail app in iOS you can only send image files. In Android 4.3 you have a whole file system at your disposal. I have complained about the lack of ability to directly email PDF files at the Apple forums. Yes, there are work arounds via 3rd party apps. But you don't have to jump through hoops to do it in Android. It just feels to me like there is more available to do just a touch or two away.

I think examples like that make all the difference in the world, and even though I'm a long-time iOS users (iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPad 1 and iPad 2) I think the Android OS is more feature rich and, dare I say it, a better OS than iOS.

There are some things which are better in iOS. The ability to do a complete backup, via iTunes, on your computer, for example. And of course I'm still having issues with syncing some things from my Mac. If you are heavily tied to the Apple ecosystem and don't have patience and the various syncing is critical to you, you have to think about whether the better feature set compensates for the trouble of figuring out syncing outside of iTunes.

But music is not an issue. The included Google Music Manager works well (and there are several 3rd party apps reported to be even better). Syncing iTunes playlists was trivial with the Google Music Manager. I expect you would not have trouble syncing any music you have in iTunes, assuming it is not DRM protected. I've never used audio books though, so I can't verify that for you. If there is a free one I can download from iTunes I'd be happy to test though.

Anyway, I find myself picking up and playing with my Nexus 7 more than I do my iPad. So that should tell you something.

Oh - and don't forget the Swype keyboard. It is amazing!


doug

 

[FitzAusTex]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

I'm a mac fan, but never got into ios. I don't hate it, I just never found it as interesting as Android. ios is about as interesting as the Android app drawer. Yeah, I use my Android app drawer, but I'd be bored to death staring at my app drawer all day. I love my widgets, and setting up my four screens the way that makes sense for me.

Also, not generally popular, but I love my Google TV, and how my Nexus and Galaxy Nexus are all integrated with my TV. Google TV will be getting an upgrade to jelly bean in the coming weeks, and then it might actually be amazing, instead of merely great.

Funny thing is bwtn Google TV and my Nexus devices, the only time I even use my Mac is when I have to get something intensive done.

Also, have you tried SwiftKey keyboard? Swype is cool, but SwiftKey is amazing. (also possible that swype has drastically improved and is now comparable to SwiftKey, but I haven't used it in a long time.

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[Farish]

Re: As a Mac user, how locked am I to the Apple ecosystem? The answer turns out to be "very."

I just realized my problem with this thread. Some of the issues you are having would be the same whether on Mac or Windows.

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