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When I bought an Android tablet, despite it being from a completely different manufacturer than my phone, as soon as the tablet knew my Google account it said "I see your phone is on the local wifi. Would you like me to update from that rather than drag everything down from the Net?". Smooth as anything.
It just works.
Fox
Aye, that's a very accurate and hard hitting rant. The network/cloud stuff in particular.
When I bought an Android tablet, despite it being from a completely different manufacturer than my phone, as soon as the tablet knew my Google account it said "I see your phone is on the local wifi. Would you like me to update from that rather than drag everything down from the Net?". Smooth as anything.
When I bought my gf an iPad, not only did it fail to sync from the Net properly but something about the mere attempt caused her iPhone to refuse to do any more backups. She refused to touch either device until she could get to a Genius bar, for fear of lost iTunes data etc.
Again, your first thought might be "owning everything should make them better at this". But I think a competitive ecosystem based on open standards with many players in it can force good integration. In contrast, Apple's discipline has slipped and they rely too much on user patience and the Genius Bar to resolve unexpected scenarios. Which is not so good now that they've downgraded the Genius Bar.