this after having tried just about every competitor to apples machines some nonapple phones and tablets are nearly as nice as the iphone and ipad googles nexus line is quite good but i havent found any that beat it and none that are as pleasurable to usebut the best thing about apples hardware is that it maximizes your ability to be promiscuous with software apples app store is home to more programs than any other app marketplace whats more the most innovative startup firms often create apps for apples platform before they bother with android since software is the soul of a machine the source of all our devices advancing powers youre best off getting the gadgets that can run the widest range of software a note for the sticklers yes apple restricts the ways you can tinker with the deeper parts of your mobile devices but if youre a tinkerer you dont need to read a column to decide what to buyimagecreditcolin hackleyvisit florida via associated pressuse googles services my phone and tablet carry apples logo but almost everything i do with them is routed through the search companys servers theres googles gmail app for email googles calendar to manage your day google maps to tell you where to go chrome to browse the web and even the otherwise useless google plus social network to back up your photosthrowing your data at google is a good idea for two reasons first the company is incredibly good at managing it it lets you have access to stuff on pretty much any device anywhere in the world all the time its services almost never go down its data is extremely accurate see maps and barring intrusion by the nsa google offers solid security like twofactor authenticationi also love the handy tricks google adds as it learns more and more about me yes im aware i sound like a pow praising my jailers but count my blinks its true for instance its google now feature available as part of the google search app on the iphone can automatically predict what you are doing next and show you relevant information like traffic directions and boarding passes just when you need them it even enhances your photos making your pretty face even prettierwait a second though arent you committing to google by giving it all your stuff nope because heres the best thing unlike many of its rivals google allows you to download your personal data from most of its services so you can easily move to some other pusherbuy media from amazon this one is a nobrainer if youre looking to buy a movie on your windows laptop today shouldnt you get one that will also work on an android tablet you buy tomorrow if you buy a book to read on your ipad shouldnt you also make sure it works on the kindle youre planning to get for christmasdifferent media providers offer different levels of such interoperability but books music and movies