Long time readers and customers know I used to write a syndicated technical article that stopped around 10 years ago. What seems like an eternity ago, I wrote an article about technology becoming homogeneous. Kind of all technology blending together.

At the time I talked about an idea of different operating systems having a similar feel to one another. Smartphones were just starting to become popular and apps were the rage. If there was an app for iPhone, you better bet there was one for Android.

There was also confusion about interoperability between Apple phones and Microsoft operating systems. Different platforms were starting to merge because they had to. Apple had to make iTunes work with Windows so they could sell their phones to Windows users.

It was a time of mass hysteria in the tech world. I guess it’s still somewhat the same, but at the time there was a real dichotomy between platform users. Mac vs PC was a real thing and iPhone vs Android was a definite thing. Each platform had its strengths and weaknesses and everyone knew them.

Fast forward a bunch of years and my prediction isn’t entirely true, but we’re seeing a lot of familiarity from platform to platform. Reality is there’s only a few ways to do something and it makes differentiation in the marketplace difficult. Think about it, a touchscreen is a touchscreen and icons are icons on any screen.

I purchased a new iPhone last month, ahead of the potential tariffs. I was showing off some of the new AI features to a customer today before she pulled her Google Pixel out and shared similar features. They were so closely matched that the gestures and workflow were the same. Outside of the phone body it would be really hard to distinguish them from one another.

Part of this is a copycat and I can do it better history where one company does something and another follows with their own better version. More than anything I believe there’s a level of refinement that comes from this process of oneupping a competitor that simply leads to only one way of doing something. Let’s face it, there’s only so many ways of doing the same thing so every product starts feeling the same.

New technology really doesn’t make significant changes to the base product. At the end of the day a new feature, like automated AI text replies, can be easily implemented on any device. As soon as one company adds a new feature, each of its competitors has the same.

There was a day when Apple users were the artsy fartsy type and PC users were all nerds. Over time the two platforms started doing much of the same and software publishers started creating titles for both Mac and PC. When I first started in this field almost all photographers had Macs. Now I see more PC’s coming in with Photoshop than Macs.

From talking to customers I’m seeing the pendulum swing to people making decisions about long term investments rather than functionality. Because functionality is for the most part the same, the decision comes down to spending more money to get a longer lasting device vs replacing the device every few years. Consumers are seeing there’s very little benefit to going with one platform over another so they’re making decisions based on new criteria.

From the brain of Jeromy Patriquin, President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located in Greenfield MA and Gardner MA. For more of my articles you can visit LocalComputerWiz.com.