Why I'm Finally Leaving Apple

 

Why I Am Switching From Apple in 2026.

• The Long Loyalty
• The Year the Story Changed
• The Culture of Repair Changed
• No Longer an Apple Loyalist I Once Was

My first job, back in the early 1990s, was as an Apple technician. On day one, someone handed me a Macintosh—I believe it was a IIci, running a Motorola 68030 processor—and let me alone with it. No manual, no training, no instructions. I simply played with the machine for three days and mastered it on my own. That was the whole point of the Macintosh when it launched: a computer so intuitive that anyone could pick it up without a manual. And it worked. I was proof of it.

*Apple IIci from Wikipedia*

The Long Loyalty

That experience shaped my entire relationship with technology. I briefly used a Palm Pilot in the early 90s, later switched to a BlackBerry, and then, when the first iPhone arrived in 2007, I never looked back. I've been an iPhone user ever since. I wasn't alone—my whole family became devoted to Apple. iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pros have been our devices of choice for more than two decades.

The Year the Story Changed.

But 2026 marks the first year I'm seriously considering a Samsung phone instead. I know the switch won't be painless—the interface is different, and moving twenty years of data across ecosystems is never simple. Still, for the first time, I genuinely believe Apple isn't what it used to be. Rumours about declining innovation, service quality, and build quality have circulated for years, really since Steve Jobs passed away. At some point, rumours start to feel like reality. In 1990, a computer intuitive enough for a stranger to master in three days was radical—nobody else was close. Today, that's just expected; every major OS does it. So what feels like Apple falling behind may really be the rest of the industry finally catching up to a standard Apple set decades ago.

I spent about twenty years working as a technician on both Apple and Windows machines, and for most of that time, I favoured Apple. Macs were easier to use and far less prone to breaking down. Meanwhile, endless complaints rolled in from Windows users frustrated with forced updates and system instability. Apple's advantage felt real and earned.

The Culture of Repair Has Changed. 

When desktop computers dominated, we used to fix machines ourselves—swap a part, replace a drive, extend the system's life. Today, repair costs are often close to the price of a new computer, so people simply buy new ones instead of fixing what they have. That shift says a lot about where the industry has gone, Apple included.

For years, Apple computers were the standard recommendation for artists and creatives, while Windows machines were the go-to for gamers. But as graphics cards and processors on the Windows side have advanced, that gap has nearly closed. It's genuinely difficult now to tell the two platforms apart in terms of raw performance and capability.

No Longer an Apple Loyalist I Once Was.

I plan to buy a Samsung phone next, and my wife will likely follow. What I really want—more than brand loyalty—is a unified ecosystem where all my devices run the same operating system and share data effortlessly, the way Windows devices have managed to do for years. Apple has had an incredible run, and I'll always respect what it did for people like me, who learned computing simply by touching one. But I think it may finally be time to let another platform take the lead.

What about you—what's your next phone going to be? If you're leaning in the same direction, maybe we're both seeing something real.

* The top image was created by Nano Banana 2