Grabs you and locks you in

Now do bear in mind that I come to Apple technology from the point of view of the Spectrum/Atari ST/Archimedes/WinTel models.  In other words my experience with computers has been very diverse and the closest thing to a single platform is that I have tended to teach on Windows machines for most of my teaching career - and therefore use them for personal computing.  A couple of years ago, having gone through hell and high-water to even attempt to get a ticket for a queue to buy an iPhone 4 in KL, I  turned on my heels and went to the nearest Maxis shop and bought an HTC Wildfire instead.  And I felt good about it because open source Android OS things are generally good in principle, and I felt like I was cocking a snoop to the Apple behemoth.  

Fast forward now, and having used iPads and subsequently a macbook and iMacs in teaching, I must say that I have gone over to the other side.  Apple devices just WORK better, FEEL better, ARE better than their PC or Android equivalent.  And much of this has to do with the ecosystem that envelopes you whenever you use an Apple device - an ecosystem that supports you and does crazy things like use iCloud across all devices, bouncing photos around photostream.  Not crazy now but the idea was two years ago.  It just works better.  Hence we now have a Macbook, an iPad 2 and 3 from work, an iPhone 4S for my Christmas present, which is so much better in so many ways than my Wildfire that I do not have the time to express how, and that gleaming white tease of an iPad mini for K.  The reason why the ecosystem is important in all of this is that it took me - Director of ICT - two full, intense, concentrated hours in the wee small hours to get my contacts off my old Android phone and onto my iPhone, involving convert address books into csv, then into vcf, then into iTunes, then up into the (google) cloud, then down onto the iPhone.  Eventually.  The process was like moving house and at one point I was seriously going to give up and manually enter them all, which of course is anathema to anybody who is in any way IT-savvy, but was an attractive proposition with three small children snapping at my heels.  So eventually I got it to work and I now realise that I never want to move house/ecosystems again.  I want to stay enveloped and secure.  As an aside, the iPad mini is just the most desirable piece of kit I think I have ever used - works absolutely perfectly, as light as the gossamer wing-tip of a silicon angel, and brings a smile to your face whenever you use it.  Apple are doing something right, aren't they?