Android cross-platform integration is inferior to Apple cross-platform

[pete6032]

In the past 7 years I have only ever owned an Android phone, Android tablet, and used a PC. My wife, on the other hand, has a MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. Seeing some of the cross platform integration on her devices is seriously tempting to want to switch to Apple. Android seems to fail at this badly. My wife can send and receive text messages from any of her devices. Meanwhile I am stuck with Google's "Messages for Web" to get texts on my laptop. Messages for Web is awful and doesn't work consistently. I have to refresh it constantly because it disconnects from the phone on a regular basis. And there is no support for getting text messages on my Galaxy Tab tablet without buying a 3rd party app. Also any text I get on my phone or PC gets chopped up into 160 characters, so I'm constantly copying my texts into a notepad file to combine URLs that run over 160 characters. That doesn't seem to happen at all in the Apple ecosystem.

 

[WelshBloke]

Ahhh. Americans and their fondness for SMS. Its cute really.

 

[quikah]

/shrug I use Your Phone app in windows 10 to connect my s21 to my PC. works well enough, kind of buggy at times. Can't imagine switching to Apple, god awful OS, it is super hard to use to me, always takes me ages to figure out how to fix something on my wife's phone/ipad.

 

[Commodus]

/shrug I use Your Phone app in windows 10 to connect my s21 to my PC. works well enough, kind of buggy at times. Can't imagine switching to Apple, god awful OS, it is super hard to use to me, always takes me ages to figure out how to fix something on my wife's phone/ipad.

The OS is fine; Apple occasionally does weird things like shunting many app-specific toggles to system settings, but it's not that difficult. It sounds more like a matter of getting used to the differences than anything.

I'd add that you illustrated the reason to consider an Apple switch in your second sentence. Apple's integration isn't "kind of buggy at times." Just today I've been messaging my fiancée and making important calls from my Mac using the chat and phone services from my iPhone. I didn't have to think about it or deal with glitches — I just did it. That's worth a lot in my book.

 

[MrSquished]

I use the google messages app on the phone and on my computers and its seamless. Previously I used Mighty Text on my phone, computers and when I had a tablet on that as well. Always worked well. It has never even occurred to me to not pick up my phone to make a phone call.

But yes, Apple has a completely walled garden, so these things are easier to implement. But only until recently were you given the ability to not have just a wall of icons for your phone screens. I mean that's an instant disqualification in my book. Also I can upgrade my own desktop PC, good luck doing that with a Mac. As always there are tradeoffs whichever way you go.