iOS to Android and Back Again: the woes of migrating between operating systems

I used an Android phone for only one month and was terrified by how quickly I got used to it. It was just so easy! My contacts synced with my Gmail, Google Maps worked like a dream, and Inbox was like digital narcotics. (Imagine: all my to-dos, reminders and mail in one place!) And that back-button! How did I live without a back-button?? But it couldn’t last, I knew. Android and I weren’t meant to be. I’d recently bought a MacBook Pro. I’d grown up with iPods and iMacs. My loyalty was with Apple, no matter how much I hated to admit it.

And I did hate it. For an entire week, I hated my new iPhone. It would be fine, I’d told myself, you’ll just download all those Google Apps from the app-store and use them as before! The app-icons will look different, but hey! Except, it’s not that simple: Chrome is not (and cannot be, without a jailbreak) iOS’s default browser; Google Maps must give preference to Apple Maps; don’t you dare add a contact to Contacts, because there is no hope of syncing them to your Google contacts (unless you have ‘contacts’ enabled on the gmail account attached to your iCloud, but that poses its own problems if you already had contacts on both accounts), and if you use Inbox for email, you won’t be able to access the contact anyway!

Inbox was hard to give up. It did so many things, so well! Mail is a poor, anemic alternative to Inbox——not even an alternative because it doesn’t do half the things Inbox does——but I’m learning to cope. Lastly, I deleted all my Google apps except for YouTube, Google Translate and Google Now. (As hard as I try to like Siri, I can't. Google Now is just better in every way. Siri has misinterpreted my speech every time I’ve used her. Google has never once.) It cost me heartbreak and a momentary loss of productivity, but I've managed to go almost completely Apple-app-user.


So, are you happy, Apple? I did it. I converted back to iOS, and, finally, my phone has stopped fighting me. I use Safari, Mail, Reminders—the whole deal. They’re all beautifully designed, run flawlessly and make my life more productive. But, somewhere in there, my heart still has a special place for Google. That was a beautiful month, Android. I’ll never forget you.

Comments

  1. Michael BondOctober 7, 2015 at 1:32 PM

    "don’t you dare add a contact to Contacts, because there is no hope of syncing them to your Google contacts (unless you have ‘contacts’ enabled on the gmail account attached to your iCloud, but that poses its own problems if you already had contacts on both accounts), and if you use Inbox for email, you won’t be able to access the contact anyway!"

    Why not just migrate your contacts over to Google and disable contact sync for iCloud? And Inbox can access your device contacts, in addition to your Google contacts (which, depending on what's in Google's 'My Contacts' might be the same anyway).

    "Inbox was hard to give up."

    So don't give it up! It's still good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 7, 2015 at 4:23 PM

    Wow this post is incredibly dumb. If you like Android better, use it.

    ReplyDelete

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