Watching Vlad's video reminded me of my own quest for a system to solve my problems. I tried organizing by tasks, separating life into work, personal areas, and goals. After years of testing various solutions, I realized the answer was right in front of me all along: the device we use is the system.
In the 90s, my Palm offered a fully integrated experience. Notes, calendars, and tasks were effortlessly searchable and interconnected. Later, the Galaxy Note provided a similar experience; it was there I began using Evernote, fully integrated at the time. Contacts, agendas, tasks, handwritten notes—everything was seamlessly connected. I thought I needed to manage it, but everything was already intuitively linked.
When the Galaxy Note line ended, I lost that integration but rediscovered it with Apple. On Apple devices, everything is integrated. Microsoft's, Google's, and online solutions like Evernote lack true integration. Super apps attempt to encompass everything but fail due to complexity, offering less than specialized tools. Today, only Apple provides a truly integrated system, which is why I use their products.
Creating a spreadsheet to evaluate a product's price? I use Numbers, focusing on what matters. Browsing in Safari requires no extra steps to capture information; everything goes into history or the Reading List. Find a company selling the computer? I add it to Contacts. Record my thoughts? I use Notes. At purchase time, searching in Spotlight unifies information from various apps—the computer is a single, integrated entity.
I don't need to register receiving the invoice; it arrives via integrated email. Spotlight brings up the PDF, item list—everything. Photos of significant moments are automatically registered and located. The solution lies in an integrated system that truly helps. Unfortunately, only Apple currently offers this. On other platforms, people adopt complex workflows to stay organized, symptomatic of a larger issue: the lack of integration in popular computers. On Android and Windows, each app stands alone. Super apps like Evernote or Notion try to integrate everything but face political—not technical—barriers.
Companies hesitate to share profits by fully integrating services, fearing users could easily switch tools. Microsoft and Google offer integrated systems only to businesses, not end users. Only Apple delivers this integration locally and securely.
So when I see videos like Vlad's, I understand the effort—I’ve been there and created various systems myself. But now I see it's unnecessary. It's a significant effort to solve a problem that lies with the big companies. We, as consumers, need to demand complete and integrated computers.
Buying a computer shouldn't necessitate installing apps that don't communicate. Information transfer should be fluid. On Apple devices, apps integrate not just through search but via direct data exchange using Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, or Automator—like the old terminal pipes before graphical interfaces.
It seems that after systems like Windows emerged, companies began viewing users as incapable of grasping the importance of integration. A tablet should be a single entity, not a collection of isolated apps. Just as we perceive our brain as a unified entity rather than separate parts, so should our computers be. In the Apple ecosystem, app integration is fundamental. Other companies try to imitate this but without success. They failed to grasp that seamless application integration matters more than merely connecting devices. Perhaps Huawei's new Harmony OS Next can achieve something similar; I'm closely watching this possibility.
It's disheartening to see people switch to Mac but use it like a PC with isolated apps and services. It's like buying a complete car and covering the dashboard with an Android tablet taped on because they don't want to invest time learning a new system. They undermine the system's integration by preferring Chrome over Safari out of habit, instantly losing the benefits of integration. This is lamentable. Consumers should demand that Google integrate Chrome with Apple's system if they intend to offer it on the platform.
Anyway, I believe I'm sharing this with someone who understands what I'm saying. I've been alone in this viewpoint for a long time.
I understand this so much and we seem to have lost so much that we already had before the cloud came along.
I remember my Palm and Blackberry days and everything was integrated, it just worked together seamlessly and then for some reason when smart phones & the cloud arrived all that stopped and it was individual apps & software that didn't seak to each other.
The cloud industry has spent the last 10 years trying to integrate things that we already had integrated in the year 2000!
Maybe that's one of the many reasons productivity levels slumped in the West from 2008/2009 onwards... we were much more productive before the cloud & smart phones.
Watching Vlad's video reminded me of my own quest for a system to solve my problems. I tried organizing by tasks, separating life into work, personal areas, and goals. After years of testing various solutions, I realized the answer was right in front of me all along: the device we use is the system.
In the 90s, my Palm offered a fully integrated experience. Notes, calendars, and tasks were effortlessly searchable and interconnected. Later, the Galaxy Note provided a similar experience; it was there I began using Evernote, fully integrated at the time. Contacts, agendas, tasks, handwritten notes—everything was seamlessly connected. I thought I needed to manage it, but everything was already intuitively linked.
When the Galaxy Note line ended, I lost that integration but rediscovered it with Apple. On Apple devices, everything is integrated. Microsoft's, Google's, and online solutions like Evernote lack true integration. Super apps attempt to encompass everything but fail due to complexity, offering less than specialized tools. Today, only Apple provides a truly integrated system, which is why I use their products.
Creating a spreadsheet to evaluate a product's price? I use Numbers, focusing on what matters. Browsing in Safari requires no extra steps to capture information; everything goes into history or the Reading List. Find a company selling the computer? I add it to Contacts. Record my thoughts? I use Notes. At purchase time, searching in Spotlight unifies information from various apps—the computer is a single, integrated entity.
I don't need to register receiving the invoice; it arrives via integrated email. Spotlight brings up the PDF, item list—everything. Photos of significant moments are automatically registered and located. The solution lies in an integrated system that truly helps. Unfortunately, only Apple currently offers this. On other platforms, people adopt complex workflows to stay organized, symptomatic of a larger issue: the lack of integration in popular computers. On Android and Windows, each app stands alone. Super apps like Evernote or Notion try to integrate everything but face political—not technical—barriers.
Companies hesitate to share profits by fully integrating services, fearing users could easily switch tools. Microsoft and Google offer integrated systems only to businesses, not end users. Only Apple delivers this integration locally and securely.
So when I see videos like Vlad's, I understand the effort—I’ve been there and created various systems myself. But now I see it's unnecessary. It's a significant effort to solve a problem that lies with the big companies. We, as consumers, need to demand complete and integrated computers.
Buying a computer shouldn't necessitate installing apps that don't communicate. Information transfer should be fluid. On Apple devices, apps integrate not just through search but via direct data exchange using Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, or Automator—like the old terminal pipes before graphical interfaces.
It seems that after systems like Windows emerged, companies began viewing users as incapable of grasping the importance of integration. A tablet should be a single entity, not a collection of isolated apps. Just as we perceive our brain as a unified entity rather than separate parts, so should our computers be. In the Apple ecosystem, app integration is fundamental. Other companies try to imitate this but without success. They failed to grasp that seamless application integration matters more than merely connecting devices. Perhaps Huawei's new Harmony OS Next can achieve something similar; I'm closely watching this possibility.
It's disheartening to see people switch to Mac but use it like a PC with isolated apps and services. It's like buying a complete car and covering the dashboard with an Android tablet taped on because they don't want to invest time learning a new system. They undermine the system's integration by preferring Chrome over Safari out of habit, instantly losing the benefits of integration. This is lamentable. Consumers should demand that Google integrate Chrome with Apple's system if they intend to offer it on the platform.
Anyway, I believe I'm sharing this with someone who understands what I'm saying. I've been alone in this viewpoint for a long time.
I understand this so much and we seem to have lost so much that we already had before the cloud came along.
I remember my Palm and Blackberry days and everything was integrated, it just worked together seamlessly and then for some reason when smart phones & the cloud arrived all that stopped and it was individual apps & software that didn't seak to each other.
The cloud industry has spent the last 10 years trying to integrate things that we already had integrated in the year 2000!
Maybe that's one of the many reasons productivity levels slumped in the West from 2008/2009 onwards... we were much more productive before the cloud & smart phones.
Great post. Thank you.