Well, im done...

[dgr_874]

With Apple and Android! :smile:

Over the last year I have been running all three ecosystems in my house as an experiment, My immediate and extended family had access to a wide range of products to play with at their leisure. I had iPads, iPhones, and apple TV's running alongside my windows phones, PC, XBOX 360's and nexus phones and Chromecasts' etc. Everyone could experiment at their hearts content.

I gave everyone their own user id and told everyone to just use what they wanted to, no strings attached. I then watched what they used and how much they enjoyed using it. I noticed that we used less and less of the apple and Google products. The family eventually settled on using most of the windows stuff over everything else. Except the wife, ill have to pry her iPhone from her cold dead hands.

Most of us now have windows phones because of how affordable they are. We use the Xbox 360 for games and in conjunction with Media Center for all our TV needs. Netflix and Hulu on the Xbox with no gold account required is great!. I now use my surface pro to game everywhere! I even put media center on it so I can basically have a portable HD TV when I can connect to my home WiFi and grab a tuner from the network. The Chromecast was just to hard for my family to figure out without a lot of help. I was trying to remember the last time we turned on the apple TV as I was disconnecting it earlier today. Chromecast too.

Anyways, I figured I would share a little about my experience with using everything. Not everything Windows was better for sure. But overall things seem to be starting to come together. If I had to name one thing that kept me with the Windows stuff it would be OneDrive. Once I got it all set up and saw everything sync to everything else it was a moment of clarity for me. Icloud drive on apple has to be one of the worst software implementations that I have ever seen. I'm a pretty smart tech guy and I could barely figure it out.

If anyone has any questions about what I did or what I used, just let me know. I'll be happy to answer anything.

Its good to be back...

 

[theefman]

Would be interesting to hear more detail on what worked and what didn't, also how the Microsoft Band would be received, seems like it would be a good addition.


Sent from my Surface Pro 3 using Tapatalk

Sent from my Surface Pro 3 using Tapatalk

 

[dgr_874]

Ya, I think having the band come out today was what really made me decide that the experiment was over with.

That plus the utter hatred of anything Microsoft over on the macrumors web site made me not want to be part of that section of Apple anymore.

Any specifics I could answer? Lots went right, and lots went wrong lol.

 

[Bobvfr]

Yes nothing is perfect, but a thought just struck me this morning, I gave in and pretty much went total MS this year after playing with alternatives.

My wife has had her laptop almost a year, mine is about six months old, I haven't had to take the battery out of either of them to force a restart, can't say I managed that long on any other laptops we have owned.

I admit I really like MS stuff now, but the band isn't for me so not buying MS just for the sake of it, but the integration of Xbox One, phones and PC's with OneDrive is very good.


Bob

 

[bozza72]

There can be only one..........

 

[OwenDL]

I made the mistake of going on Macrumors to look at when they all thought and there are actually a good amount of people who were giving good credit to MS and not just mindlessly hating on the product. Also alot of people there even saying they're interested or going to buy it! Quite surprising.

 

[LockOnTech]

To the OP, I have done the same thing what you did; even though I like using windows phone along with my Dell venue pro 8 and my personal computer using windows 7, I still use my iphone and ipad along with my macbook air. While I do agree that I do not understand what icloud drive does compared to the original icloud, I still believe that I can use both Mac and personal computer efficiently and cooperatively. Well done on your conclusion.

 

[dgr_874]

I made the mistake of going on Macrumors to look at when they all thought and there are actually a good amount of people who were giving good credit to MS and not just mindlessly hating on the product. Also alot of people there even saying they're interested or going to buy it! Quite surprising.

Yes, there was a few who could see that this is a good product. But, there was so many that just dismissed is because it didn't have an Apple logo.

To the OP, I have done the same thing what you did; even though I like using windows phone along with my Dell venue pro 8 and my personal computer using windows 7, I still use my iphone and ipad along with my macbook air. While I do agree that I do not understand what icloud drive does compared to the original icloud, I still believe that I can use both Mac and personal computer efficiently and cooperatively. Well done on your conclusion.

We were using everything together too but we all, just started to reach for the windows stuff more and more.

 

[KhawarNadeem]

LOL @ the clickbait title, OP. I'm sure people stormed in just to bash you.

I agree with you, on all points. Credits where it's due.

 

[jonnaver]

Chromecast is hard...?

Lol

 

[theefman]

Ya, I think having the band come out today was what really made me decide that the experiment was over with.

That plus the utter hatred of anything Microsoft over on the macrumors web site made me not want to be part of that section of Apple anymore.

Any specifics I could answer? Lots went right, and lots went wrong lol.

I think it would be interesting to hear an instance of what went wrong on the non-MS devices and how the Microsoft experience won out. And also what would you like to be added by Microsoft over the next couple of years to enhance it even further?

 

[dgr_874]

Chromecast is hard...?

Lol

yes it is when you have parents and extended family that are 60+ years old.

 

[dgr_874]

I think it would be interesting to hear an instance of what went wrong on the non-MS devices and how the Microsoft experience won out. And also what would you like to be added by Microsoft over the next couple of years to enhance it even further?

Let's see, one thing that was a big win for Microsoft was our TV. I use Windows Media Center, a hauppage 2250 dual TV tuner, and an HD antenna on the outside of our house. Everyone initially tried to use the apple tv to actually, ya know, watch tv. Initially it was great, we bought media and watched it on the apple tv. Everyone figured out how to airplay and screen mirror fairly fast. We had an decent time with it. Having to buy all our shows quickly wore thin and everyone just quit using it one day. We could not justify the cost (like a lot of Apple things) vs just using the computer to record our tv shows over the air. We still went back and forth some but, when Microsoft dropped the gold requirement for Netflix and Hulu plus, we turned on the Xbox's and never really turned them off. While we all rarely game, we use the entertainment services all the time. Having them all (3 of them in the house) all work as extenders for the tv was great. We could schedule and record from any TV in the house and all the guides and recorded TV were in sync with everything stored in once central location on the home PC. That was so great and everyone figured it out without my help at all. Along the same idea, the first time that I sat down out on my deck, started Windows Media Center up, and started watching live over-the-air HD TV without any wires was a big turning point for me.

As for what I would like to see them add, hummmm....I really would like to see them add music metadata management a lot better. I want star ratings, playcounts, and smart playlist badly. I work around it with XBOX Music, but I shouldn't have to work around anything. Other than that I like the way things are going. Onedrive in particular is just spectacular. It was the one thing that held me in the Microsoft world when I was ready to quit about a year ago. It seems like it just gets better and better too.

 

[LockOnTech]

Chromecast is hard...?

Lol

Sometimes getting most things to cast on chromecast is a huge fight to get it to function, Just an observation on my experience with it.

 

[jonnaver]

Sometimes getting most things to cast on chromecast is a huge fight to get it to function, Just an observation on my experience with it.

I'll admit I have an easier experience with it because I use a nexus tablet with mine and everything is fully supported