Mobile OSs Getting iTunes/iCloud/etc to work on Android

[sleepydinosaur]

I am considering an Android phone for my next one. Though I'm not unhappy with my current or any past iPhones, I'm looking to see how the other half lives. So as one who has Apple Music, Itunes Match, iCloud, etc. I am obviously invested in Apple.

Has anyone made the switch and what alternatives are there to have the aforementioned services running on an Android device?

Any relevant and constructive experience and insight welcome.

Thanks

 

[tbayrgs]

Apple Music is on Android so no need to switch if you choose not to. I personally prefer Google Play Music and as a prior user of Apple Music, suggest you try it...much better implementation and app. Also, you can upload your entire music library for free, making it available for streaming or offline downloading if needed.

Regarding iCloud...are you using it for file storage? I'd recommend Google Drive. Unlike Apple and iCloud, you don't need use your cloud storage for device backups, and you get 15GB free. Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive work well too.

 

[s0nicpr0s]

I haven't made the switch, as I have never owned an iPhone of my own. But I have been successful in setting up iCloud email on my Android devices. I use the Gmail app, but I would imagine that other email applications would work just as well assuming you can get the couple of settings figured out if it doesn't auto-configure. Pretty sure I had to hash it out myself, but that was because I did it so long ago on my Nexus 4. My LG G4 just used the older settings. (Current settings are map.mail.me.com and port 993 for incoming and smtp.mail.me.com with port 587 for outgoing)

There is currently an Apple Music app, that I assume works well enough. I haven't used this application or service as I am currently using a Google All Access with YouTube Red subscription.

As for iTunes Match, Google has their own product that is up to 50,000 songs and will look through your iTunes folders. They will match anything they have, and will upload anything that they don't. The only issue here is if you own any music with DRM on it, such as music purchased through iTunes in the early 2000's.

Other services I can think of would be:

• iCloud Drive, which as far as I'm aware has no ability to connect with non-Apple devices at this time. I use a combination of OneDrive and DropBox for my cloud storage needs.
• Photos wouldn't be syncing with Apple's services, but can be uploaded to Google (from there I believe it's possible to connect it to Apple through a Mac).
• There is a Find my Phone substitute directly from Google.
• Contacts, notes, and reminders can all be synced with a google account, and back to a Mac/iPad/iPhone.
• Several productivity apps, some of which even have cloud syncing through various services.
• Apple Pay has a few options, although none that I've seen are as polished. Android Pay and Samsung Pay are the first two that come to mind.

I don't mean to throw a bunch of information at you all at once, I'm just running through things while they are fresh in my mind. Hopefully something in here was useful. =)

 

[sleepydinosaur]

Apple Music is on Android so no need to switch if you choose not to. I personally prefer Google Play Music and as a prior user of Apple Music, suggest you try it...much better implementation and app. Also, you can upload your entire music library for free, making it available for streaming or offline downloading if needed.

Regarding iCloud...are you using it for file storage? I'd recommend Google Drive. Unlike Apple and iCloud, you don't need use your cloud storage for device backups, and you get 15GB free. Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive work well too.

I debated that but most of my music was bought thru iTunes. As for iCloud, I want the email, contacts and calendar sync'ing

 

[tbayrgs]

I debated that but most of my music was bought thru iTunes. As for iCloud, I want the email, contacts and calendar sync'ing

My entire library is in iTunes...Google Play Music has piece of software you can put on your Mac and it will upload straight from your iTunes library, including automatically uploading any new additions to your library.

When I first tried out Android a few years ago, I used a couple apps that's worked in the background and handled syncing of my iCloud contacts and calendar--it's been a few years and I can't recall its name, will add it later if I can find it. Shortly thereafter I just migrated to a Google account as it's far easier to switch devices/platforms, has full compatibility with Apple hardware, and to be honest, just works much better. I'd suggest doing he same.

And just to be clear as I forgot to mention it in my first post, all of my daily hardware presently is from Apple--6s+, Apple Watch, pair of iPads, pair of Macs and all of my family lives on Apple gear. These non-Apple services work wonderfully on Apple gear and it allows me to dabble wih non-Apple hardware without having to jump through all these hoops.

 

[s0nicpr0s]

I debated that but most of my music was bought thru iTunes. As for iCloud, I want the email, contacts and calendar sync'ing

Would you say that a lot of your music purchased through iTunes happened prior to 2009? Sometime around then is when they switched their offerings to mostly DRM-free, which makes it much simpler to have other services scan your library. If you currently have an iTunes Match account, an article on Wired suggests that you can cheaply get around the DRM and redownload the music as an unprotected file. I haven't tested this though, and comments on the post offer mixed experiences with this.

http://www.wired.com/2014/03/kill-itunes-drm/

I will happily echo what @tbayrgs said about the Google services working quite well with Apple's products. I use most of my Google services on my iPad frequently (YouTube, Gmail, Drive, Calendar).

 

[mclld]

Break the slavery chains of closed software

 

[sd13]

How do you guys sync your iCloud contacts to android? Only new contacts that I select default to gmail are getting synced to google contacts, but my pre-existing contacts do not get synced unless I manually download the vcards and add them to google contacts.