Here is one of those rare times that I am going to blatantly and brazenly contradict myself within one week. Typically if I’m going to contradict myself I like to space those differing opinions out, but here I am, doing it within one week. I spoke earlier about the reasons why the look and feel matter for your software and devices, but here’s the thing. To a certain degree, the look and feel of the programs you use used to be hardware dependent. If you were using anything Microsoft, it meant that you were using a PC, if you wanted to use a program like Pages or table then you needed to get yourself a Mac.
1) Your hardware doesn’t have to determine your software – One of the things that I found out a few months ago when I was forced to use a Samsung phone for a while, was that it’s far less critical now than it was before what hardware you use in order to get the programs you want. When you go to the app stores of either Apple or Android phones, you will see that you can find 99% of the products in one that you can find in the other.
2) You can get 99% of the same apps on the App Store as you can in the Microsoft store – Back in the day, there were specific programs that you could use with one type of device and other applications that you could use with another. The techie reason for this is because Apple and Windows (and by default Apple and Android) had two different program languages and to have your app in both places you would have to write two completely different programs. For most coders, this was an impracticality that they were unwilling to deal with writing the two programs. Now there are conversion programs that people are making these apps can run so that they can offer their apps in the two different stores.
3) The OS of most devices are getting startlingly similar – The Operating System (or OS) of your computer is the basis of how everything runs on your machine. I have a Windows computer at work and a Mac at home so I am relatively fluent on both. The fact of the matter is that up until a few years ago the way that the OS on Macs and PCs worked was startlingly different. This made it very difficult for people to switch between systems. For the longest time, I was a PC user at home, but I did make the change (something I’ll be elaborating on next week) because of how similar the systems were becoming. Indeed, there are still some serious differences between Macs and PCs, but because the systems have become more alike than they are different it makes it easier to switch between them if you need to.
The Look and feel of the technology or the programs you use can be a mitigating factor in what you use; it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. All technology needs to be able to function the way that you want it to perform. If you focus on the factors that matter, then you will find the programs that work best for you.
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What programs do you like using?
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