[lotsofpulp]

Basically everyone in my family used to call me for tech support (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins), but in the past 3 years or so, I’ve convinced everyone to iPhones and iPads and MacBook Airs, they have have basically zero tech support calls to me. Everything just works as long as they keep track of their Apple ID and iCloud login. There is definitely value to not spending any time or brain cycles worrying about how to do something, and having everything integrated and always working.

With Windows, it’s always update this, restart that, where is this menu option, drivers? It’s not for people who don’t want to spend their time figuring that stuff out. Plus Microsoft is not as trustworthy of a brand.

[bigbugbag]

Fun thing, I was in the exact same situation so I told them I would only provide support if they switched to Linux (no need to buy new hardware) and got similar results: support call lowered dramatically to almost none (except when mozilla forces stupid changes on users in firefox, solved by dropping firefox for waterfox, or when systemd breaks something that work perfectly before update).

99% of their needs are covered for a total cost of 0, only remaining pita is the odd iphone owned by teen cousin wanting to boast social status and missing itunes so he bought a macbook and has a variety of issues with it.

[pjmlp]

With Portuguese salaries it is cheaper to spend the difference sending the family members to our trustworthy PC repair shop and there is still budget left after a couple of years.

[dirkgently]

After upgrading every older family member to Chromebook, I have had zero calls for support.

Apple isn't the only game in town.

[lotsofpulp]

Unfortunately, Google has lost all of its goodwill with lack of software updates for their products, lack of battery/power efficiency, and constantly changing names, designs, apps. I tried it, people in my network tried to invest their time into it, at the end everyone just said screw it and went with Apple products. Bonus is Apple stuff re-sells for quite a bit also or lasts much longer, so effectively it doesn't actually cost more.

I know I sound like a fanboy, but after playing with Nexus phones, Xperia phones, Android tablets, Surface book, Lenovo Yogapad, I have decided that I no longer want to invest anymore time into figuring out how to get all of these to work the way I want them to, and the extra cost (if that) for Apple stuff is much cheaper than the time I used to waste on the other stuff.

[ntsplnkv2]

After doing something similar, I get tons of calls because no one knows how to use anything with it and stuff they want just isn't compatible.

Plus, you're 100% tied into google. Everything google - so how can that be considered an alternative?