Google makes most of its money from selling targeted advertising, which is based on analysing your data and behaviour. It mostly avoids doing software for non-Apple devices, with iTunes for Windows and the Apple Music app for Android being notable exceptions. Its cloud services are intended to make its devices more appealing, partly by helping them to work well together.

The three major ecosystems are very similar, but some differences reflect the way each company makes money.Īpple makes most of its money by selling devices, mainly iPhones, iPads and Macs. However, you can use all your devices with your current Outlook account. Devices often push people to adopt one ecosystem rather than another, which is the heart of your problem. Each company offers its own devices, browsers, operating systems, email service, online applications and cloud storage. Instead of syncing with a local PC, things sync via cloud-based services that make your data accessible from almost any smart device almost anywhere.īut whose cloud will you use? For many purposes, there are three major ecosystems, run by Apple, Google and Microsoft. Most homes now have a plethora of connected devices, from media servers to light bulbs. Since then things have changed dramatically, with the arrival of smartphones, mass-market tablets, ultraportable laptops, always-on home broadband and widely available internet connections via wireless hotspots and 3G/4G cellular services. Some people had handheld “organisers” from Palm, Psion and other suppliers, but they synced with PCs. Home users did not have broadband, so email was collected via a dial-up modem. When this column started, in a previous century, most users only had one PC. I’m concerned that this is going to leave me with a mess of email addresses and accounts – an iCloud address for the phone, a Gmail address for the Chromebook, and the ongoing Windows account. My laptop needs are likely to diminish once I have finished my PhD, and will be mainly email, word processing and presentations. I use Outlook (from Office 365) to manage my email, contacts and calendar.īecause of the poor app support for the phone and Surface 2, I’m wondering about getting an iPhone and a Chromebook to replace the tablet and laptop.

One advantage is that they all log on to a single Windows account with an Outlook email address. Over the past few years I have been using all Microsoft-oriented products: a Windows 10 laptop and desktop, a Windows phone (Lumia 950) and a Surface 2 (Windows RT) tablet.

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