Apple, Google or Xiaomi: Which ecosystem is better? | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Speak­ing of an ecosys­tem, we mean a per­fect­ly inte­grat­ed sys­tem of inter­ac­tion between gad­gets: the oper­at­ing sys­tem of a com­put­er, TV, smart­phone, watch, etc.

That is, in the best case, no mat­ter what device you are cur­rent­ly using, you will get max­i­mum access to your own data and files, and will be able to per­form the same tasks. All con­tent at your fin­ger­tips.

Sev­er­al ecosys­tems that have formed from dif­fer­ent devices and their capa­bil­i­ties can be called lead­ing in the world today. Among them, of course, Apple, Google and Xiao­mi. All three com­pa­nies have many sim­i­lar­i­ties in their approach to solv­ing this prob­lem. For exam­ple, a very large load falls on a smart­phone. As a device that we car­ry with us almost always, it is he who is the source of access and con­trol over oth­er devices. But there are also many dif­fer­ences, for exam­ple, the num­ber and capa­bil­i­ties of devices.

We will con­sid­er each of the ecosys­tems in order to deter­mine the most func­tion­al.

Source: Medi­um

Apple

The main advan­tage of the Apple ecosys­tem is the oper­at­ing sys­tem. Since the com­pa­ny devel­ops its own OS, it gets the oppor­tu­ni­ty to give equal access to infor­ma­tion on a com­put­er, TV or smart­phone with­out the need to con­fig­ure or down­load addi­tion­al appli­ca­tions. Every­thing you need is right there when you first install the sys­tem or start the device for the first time. By cre­at­ing an Apple ID, you imme­di­ate­ly get your cloud, which is open to any device.

How­ev­er, the abil­i­ty to share files is not lim­it­ed, as you can auto­mat­i­cal­ly stream pho­tos, videos, upload files via Air­Drop and use fea­tures such as Side­Car, where the iPad acts as a graph­ics tablet for a lap­top or com­put­er.

One par­tic­u­lar­ly handy fea­ture is the abil­i­ty to copy text on your smart­phone or tablet and paste it on your lap­top. The shared clip­board is incred­i­bly handy for those who work on both devices.

Even a dig­i­tal sig­na­ture can be cre­at­ed on the screen of a smart­phone and used for doc­u­ments in the Pre­view pro­gram.

Most of these fea­tures work well thanks to the oper­at­ing sys­tem, which also has visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties and com­mon appli­ca­tions. Key­chain is one of the most con­ve­nient fea­tures that allows you to access accounts from any of the devices in the ecosys­tem.

A sig­nif­i­cant plus is that Apple offers a lot more fea­tures than oth­er brands. Even appli­ca­tions that share the library between devices are an option that no oth­er man­u­fac­tur­er can repli­cate yet.

The choice of devices, how­ev­er, is lim­it­ed. Apple offers com­put­ers and lap­tops, smart­phones, tablets, watch­es, a TV set-top box and a smart speak­er.

All oth­er devices, despite the fact that they can be con­nect­ed, still do not give the same free­dom that the brand­ed devices of the com­pa­ny pro­vide. When using a third-par­ty smart­phone with an Apple lap­top, you will often find your­self need­ing to trans­fer files but not being able to do so. And when you con­sid­er the fact that the price of some devices is very high, Apple cre­ates very seri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties for its fans.

The Apple ecosys­tem is con­ve­nient and real­ly shows its best side in the process of work, how­ev­er, after it it is very dif­fi­cult to get used to any oth­er, and in a sense, the user becomes depen­dent on the com­pa­ny’s devices, with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing more afford­able alter­na­tives.

For a long time, Apple also made things hard­er by not using stan­dard charg­ers. Now at least lap­tops are charged via USB type‑c, and smart­phones and watch­es can be charged from wire­less devices. There­fore, it can­not be said that the com­pa­ny does not take steps towards the user.

Source: ZDNet

Google

Google fol­lowed a sim­i­lar path, but it turned out to be much more dif­fi­cult for the com­pa­ny to come to a sim­i­lar result. Every­thing does not start with the device, large­ly because the vast major­i­ty of mod­ern smart­phones use the Android OS. For this com­pa­ny, every­thing starts with the oper­at­ing sys­tem. The com­pa­ny now offers Android and Chrome OS. Ini­tial­ly, the sys­tems were inde­pen­dent of each oth­er, and they had prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing in com­mon.

It was recent­ly that oper­at­ing sys­tems began to inter­act and the begin­ning of this process was the abil­i­ty of Chrome OS to launch Android appli­ca­tions through the Play Store. In oth­er words, on a Pix­el­book lap­top, you will use the same appli­ca­tion that you use on a smart­phone, in the ide­al case for Google, on a Pix­el smart­phone.

That’s not all, as ambi­tion won’t let Google stop there when Apple offers such a great oppor­tu­ni­ty. The com­pa­ny has added a “Bet­ter Togeth­er” fea­ture, again to the Chrome OS oper­at­ing sys­tem. It allows you to use the same mes­sen­ger, unlock your lap­top from your smart­phone if you are near­by, and use your smart­phone as a portable wi-fi trans­mit­ter.

But what can make a user buy prod­ucts from Google? The most sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage that the com­pa­ny offers now is ear­ly access to all oper­at­ing sys­tem updates and the abil­i­ty to update auto­mat­i­cal­ly. All oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers have to wait longer. Also, for a while, Google was in no hur­ry to allow oth­er brands to use the spe­cial “Bet­ter Togeth­er” func­tion­al­i­ty, so own­ers of Sam­sung smart­phones, One Plus, etc. remained on the side­lines.

Yet, despite the pre­ven­tive mea­sures that the com­pa­ny has tak­en and the attempt to lim­it the oppor­tu­ni­ties of com­peti­tors, there are sev­er­al insur­mount­able dif­fi­cul­ties, and one of them is the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Chrome OS.

Mac OS has been around for a long time and is the direct and most pop­u­lar com­peti­tor to the dom­i­nant Win­dows mar­ket. Win­dows is installed on most com­put­ers in the world. There­fore, many users will pre­fer to look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to syn­chro­nize their Android smart­phone with this par­tic­u­lar OS. Chrome OS, despite the qual­i­ty and con­ve­nience, has not gained such pop­u­lar­i­ty and there are no seri­ous rea­sons to expect that this will hap­pen yet.

But this is not to say that Google is stop­ping, on the con­trary, Google Home and Google Chrome­cast have become very pop­u­lar devices. And many are still count­ing on the arrival of the Pix­el Watch.

Many experts back in 2019 advised Google not to fol­low the path of Apple and not try to cre­ate an ana­logue of an exist­ing sys­tem. On the con­trary, inclu­sive­ness and will­ing­ness to inter­act with com­peti­tors in order to cre­ate a bet­ter and bet­ter prod­uct can be a win­ning strat­e­gy for a com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, the max­i­mum that we can get from Google so far in terms of coop­er­a­tion with oth­er axes is Google Docs, Google Dri­ve and a num­ber of appli­ca­tions that allow you to copy records and a cal­en­dar. All this is not as debugged as Apple’s, but with prop­er con­fig­u­ra­tion it will expand the func­tion­al­i­ty of devices.

Source: Rucas

Xiaomi

The Xiao­mi ecosys­tem is almost entire­ly based on apps. The com­pa­ny has­n’t built its own soft­ware yet, with the excep­tion of EMUI, which is based on Android, but the pro­duc­tion of an incred­i­bly wide range of devices allows you to cre­ate a larg­er ecosys­tem, which includes house­hold appli­ances and appli­ances, such as smart TVs. In essence, the Xiao­mi ecosys­tem is more of a smart home, but with a link to mobile devices and the ben­e­fits of using brand prod­ucts.

You can con­sid­er Xiao­mi as an improved ver­sion of the Google sys­tem, which, admit­ted­ly, takes into account the require­ments of the user much more. A sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage is the lack of own oper­at­ing sys­tems. The already men­tioned EMUI has many draw­backs, includ­ing built-in adver­tis­ing and a lot of unnec­es­sary appli­ca­tions rec­om­mend­ed and pre-installed by the man­u­fac­tur­er.

How­ev­er, Xiao­mi is try­ing to give users the abil­i­ty to share files and doc­u­ments between devices, to some extent, allow­ing them to build their own sys­tem, which will often include appli­ca­tions from a third par­ty. There­fore, we can say that the com­pa­ny paid more atten­tion to the num­ber of fea­tures, rather than their qual­i­ty and thought­ful­ness. This, too, becomes a pos­i­tive fea­ture when it comes to device acces­si­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, it does not work if you have to work not alone, and you need to share data with oth­ers.

In this regard, Xiao­mi does not com­pare with Apple, although it can com­pete with Google.

And yet I would like to note the abil­i­ty to assem­ble your own way of inter­ac­tion between devices as a plus. Imag­ine the same pos­si­bil­i­ty at Apple and Google, so that one com­pa­ny’s smart­phone could trans­mit infor­ma­tion to anoth­er com­pa­ny’s lap­top. This would be incred­i­bly con­ve­nient, and cer­tain­ly lessen the need to strict­ly stick to one brand’s prod­ucts.

Source: Xiaomi­To­day

Who is the best?

Undoubt­ed­ly, con­sid­er­ing the pros and cons of the three ecosys­tems, one can con­clude that Apple at least has a clear idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat to strive for. If we put aside all the neg­a­tive com­ments about the price and elit­ism of the prod­ucts pro­duced, and focus on the expe­ri­ence that comes with using them, then Apple is def­i­nite­ly com­ing out of the race as a win­ner.

When you can suc­cess­ful­ly apply the same fea­tures on dif­fer­ent devices, open apps, start work, and fin­ish it in the same file on anoth­er device, work­flow com­fort real­ly becomes invalu­able.

How­ev­er, among the pit­falls, you can iden­ti­fy the secu­ri­ty of devices and data. When all devices can access data, the loss or theft of one only becomes more dan­ger­ous. It turns out that Apple both sim­pli­fies and com­pli­cates the user’s task. The com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing data, and doing so more con­fi­dent­ly than com­peti­tors who do not pay as much atten­tion to the struc­ture of their ecosys­tem.

Com­pet­ing com­pa­nies, in turn, empha­size the avail­abil­i­ty and wider vari­abil­i­ty of devices — there is inter­ac­tion with Win­dows, Chrome OS and even MacOS, albeit not at the same high lev­el, but still its pres­ence can­not be denied. And many users are ready to pre­fer just that, corny because com­pa­nies do not seek to lim­it their choice in the same way.