Simple question, and one that's applicable to all of us using smartphones and tablets.
How tied are you to your OS? Do you have a lot of apps on one that makes it hard to switch, are you just very used to one "ecosystem", or are you flexible? Do you use only one, use several, or every mobile OS under the sun?
I'm flexible. I like iOS on tablets because of the number of premium apps that work very well on it, I appreciate Android's flexibility and the number of free/ad-supported apps that can allow you to do practically anything, and I prefer the smooth live-tile Metro ("Modern") UI and Office and Xbox Music integration on Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT. I wish I could pick the best aspects of all of them and make a new OS
.
Unfortunately apps don't migrate between the three, but at least my Kindle and Nook libraries do. More cross-platform apps would be better, especially if no one ever has to rebuy apps that are on more than one platform. I think that's a limiting factor for people who have a ton of of purchases on Apple who might want to move to Android or vice-versa.
For the future, I'm looking forward to seeing what Blackberry does in the next version of BB OS, and what Firefox and Ubuntu/Linux phones can add in terms of new features. And more interoperability of apps, like being able to emulate or otherwise run apps from any device on any other device (like what BlueStacks is doing, or Blackberry's Android emulation right now). That way if you really like the hardware of any phone manufacturer - be it Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, LG, Blackberry, etc - you don't have to worry about the OS so much. It's good for the industry, I think, when individuals can jump to the best hardware for them, whether it's cheaper and/or higher end - kind of like how you can port your number from one cell carrier to another if you think you can get a better deal elsewhere.
How tied are you to your OS? Do you have a lot of apps on one that makes it hard to switch, are you just very used to one "ecosystem", or are you flexible? Do you use only one, use several, or every mobile OS under the sun?
I'm flexible. I like iOS on tablets because of the number of premium apps that work very well on it, I appreciate Android's flexibility and the number of free/ad-supported apps that can allow you to do practically anything, and I prefer the smooth live-tile Metro ("Modern") UI and Office and Xbox Music integration on Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT. I wish I could pick the best aspects of all of them and make a new OS
Unfortunately apps don't migrate between the three, but at least my Kindle and Nook libraries do. More cross-platform apps would be better, especially if no one ever has to rebuy apps that are on more than one platform. I think that's a limiting factor for people who have a ton of of purchases on Apple who might want to move to Android or vice-versa.
For the future, I'm looking forward to seeing what Blackberry does in the next version of BB OS, and what Firefox and Ubuntu/Linux phones can add in terms of new features. And more interoperability of apps, like being able to emulate or otherwise run apps from any device on any other device (like what BlueStacks is doing, or Blackberry's Android emulation right now). That way if you really like the hardware of any phone manufacturer - be it Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, LG, Blackberry, etc - you don't have to worry about the OS so much. It's good for the industry, I think, when individuals can jump to the best hardware for them, whether it's cheaper and/or higher end - kind of like how you can port your number from one cell carrier to another if you think you can get a better deal elsewhere.