Apple myth firmly dispelled

MORTAL ENEMIES MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE HAVE BETTER SOFTWARE But MacBook Air is the ultimate machine for long trips, ultra-portability and instant access, with battery life a massive benefit.

You hear it most commonly from iPhone users: “All my gadgets are from Apple, because they are all compatible and work together so seamlessly.”

Usually, they are referring to the combination of iPhone, iPad and MacBook. Usually they are delighted with their choice of ecosystem, as there are few brands that produce as consistently excellent products as Apple across all categories. And because of this delight, they usually also fall completely for the marketing hype about the ecosystem.

The reality is that there is almost no difference in the ecosystem experience of an iPhone user or Android phone user who also uses a MacBook, whether an Air, Pro or plain vanilla version of the iconic notebook.

Full disclosure: I’ve been an enthusiastic MacBook Air user for at least the past six years. It is the ultimate machine for long trips, ultra-portability and instant access: it is so thin and light, has amazing battery life and goes instantly from sleep to work mode merely by opening the lid.

The significance of the bat- tery life is that I have never been on an international flight where I have run out of power. Even on the longest single-leg flights from South Africa, which would be up to about 16 hours, I would be sleeping or have the device packed away during meal times more than half the time, meaning that I can work on the machine for the entire rest of the flight.

This is a massive benefit in countering the loss of productivity that results from international travel.

Even taking aircraft out of the equation, one often finds that local events like conferences are not planned with notebook computers in mind and one can often go a full day without access to a power point. The MacBook Air is the only device that has allowed me to remain connected and fully productive throughout such events.

But the magic of the device does not extend to the ecosystem within which it functions. Its operating system, the Mac OS, is so ancient, it is still resting on the laurels of the 2001 launch of Mac OS X. What was described back then as a “radical departure” is now an old revolutionary pulling the wool over the eyes of acolytes with its fading activist credentials.

The acolytes are caught up in a reality distortion field similar to the trance into which Steve Jobs was able to place anyone trying to argue with him about Apple products – or almost any other issue. Reality, for them, is less important than their perception of reality.

That perception is fuelled by