Apple is often behind on software

When the M2 generation of Macs started to ship, I couldn't ignore it. The benchmarks and battery life were extraordinary. My main use of a laptop at the time was for writing software, and even being a .Net guy, it doesn't matter which OS I use. But this generation of hardware reversed a lot of the terrible ideas they ran with years ago that turned me to Windows machines. The silly touch bar was ditched for real function keys, good keyboards came back, and they had all of the ports, for USB-C and HDMI and SD cards, and the smart mag-safe power. I was apprehensive about the cost, $2,500, given the 16 gigs of RAM and only half a terabyte of storage, but I went with it anyway. I was, and continue to be, totally satisfied with this hardware.

But I can't say the same about Apple's software. MacOS hasn't changed much, and to be fair, it's pretty solid overall. There are little things that I miss from Windows, that I find myself always wanting. The file explorer doesn't show a tree view, which is a little annoying. But even more, the window snapping, where you can pin a window to a side tile them. Finally, they just added that feature this week. I still prefer the Start menu style of grouping things, too. Windows had a long way to go toward being polished, especially around its settings, but it's good now. Desktop OS doesn't matter that much to me. I have both in the house.

Mobile is different. Every release of iOS seems to add things that Android (or even the defunct Windows Phone) had years ago, or even from the start. The latest is the ability to organize the launcher icons in any way that you'd like. Also widgets, haptic keyboards, always on screens with the time... it's something every year. Going into the functionality of the photo apps, as well as maps and mail, were also behind by years in some cases. This year they're also, finally, adopting the newer RCS protocol for text messages (the green/blue bubble thing).

This sounds a little like me taking a shot at Apple, but mostly it's just disappointment. I was pretty deep in the ecosystem back in the day, with iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, Macs and iPads. When they started getting certain things wrong, like the laptops, I started to realize that the there was some degree of lock-in that I wasn't crazy about. At the end of the day, I just wanted to use the things that worked best for me.

I wonder how things will go now that Windows runs on Arm processors, and there's some great, less expensive hardware being made with great battery life. Heck, six months ago I bought an Asus laptop with two OLED touch screens, with top of the line everything for $1,700. It's really good.