This is Technology Bytes, episode 170, for June 7th, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go. Today I want to talk about ecosystem, and not in the sense of biology, although that’s kind of the idea of organisms working together to make some kind of ecology, as it were.
But the fact is that we live in a tech world, and there are many systems that are available through major tech companies in which we can find ourselves.
But there’s only one company that encompasses everything, or almost everything, in a technology world that we would like to do, and that’s Apple.
Not because they’re the best, it’s just what they have chosen to do.
So they have watches, and iPhones, and iPads, and computers, and desktop computers, and it just covers the gamut.
And then what they do is they make all of those devices work together very well.
So there are people who say, well, the latest Android phone has this and this and this and this, and Apple’s falling behind, and whatever you want to say, I’m not switching to an Android phone because it doesn’t work with my iPad, it doesn’t work with my Mac, it doesn’t work with my watch.
There is something about that ecosystem that Apple has created that’s going to keep me there for a very long time, because even if I don’t like one of their products and it kind of has me on the outs for some reason, that hasn’t happened yet, but it could, they would have to lose me on every single product.
Because if I switch to some other device, some other device manufacturer, I am losing all that tie together that I get using only Apple products.
And while some may say, no big deal, it is a game changer.
It is productivity at the max.
It allows me to use three different computers all at the same time with one mouse and one keyboard.
It lets my watch unlock things in a secure manner.
It lets me interact with things that I created in one environment and in a second environment with no hassle.
It allows me to copy items from one computer to another computer to another computer with no hassle.
It allows me to work seamlessly across platforms, Apple platforms, and let me do the things that I want to do.
Now, some people call that a walled garden, and Apple’s walled garden, and they only let you do what they let you do.
You can only use the things that they let you use.
People complain that the Apple Watch can only be activated with an iPhone.
Well, maybe it should be able to be activated with an iPad.
I don’t know.
But why would Apple make it activatable, if that’s a word, using an Android device?
That doesn’t make any sense.
Apple makes things for Apple customers.
And so there’s something there for all of the environments in which I want to work.
Everything I need to do is available to me in some product that Apple makes.
Now, I do drive a Kia because Apple doesn’t make a car.
Not sure that that would be the same in the ecosystem for that type of tech.
So I’m really looking at the computing tech that we use, the tracking tech that we use, tracking our health, tracking our data, tracking things that we like to track.
And so I was thinking as we get into Monday, really, coming up in just two days, the WWDC, that when Apple announces something, it is announced across all of their platforms.
No one else has the ability to do that.
Everyone else is leaning on somebody to develop a hardware solution that can run their software.
And that’s good.
I don’t only use Apple software, although mostly I do.
And I don’t only rely on Apple to provide me with the things that I want to use.
I use an app to track my water consumption, and that’s not from Apple.
I use an app to track my calories, and that’s not from Apple.
Is that the only two?
I play a lot of games on the Apple Arcade.
Those are not made by Apple.
But, you know, I do use a lot of Apple software as well.
And there’s just something about that that makes me comfortable in my tech.
There’s a consistent world in which I know I can operate in, and I can have access to everything that I’ve created across whatever device that I want to look at.
The fact that Apple put notes on the watch, and a lot of people say, that’s just crazy.
It’s too small a screen.
It is one of my favorite things.
I put my memory verses for the year in an Apple note, and I can look those up on my watch and practice and read through them, and it’s perfectly clear.
And it also gives me some focus because there’s nothing else that I can see at that moment.
So there’s a comfortableness, there’s a consistency that makes me feel confident in whatever it is that I’m trying to accomplish, whatever it is that I want to do with my tech.
So, unless Apple just falls off the wagon, I don’t know what wagon that is.
If they fail miserably at WWDC to continue to have their tech unified, then I don’t know, I guess I might look somewhere else, but I just don’t see that happening.
I don’t see it happening.
I don’t see Apple taking that off the table.
It’s a huge advantage that they have over every other company that makes any hardware at all, and I, for one, love it.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
