It’s time to ditch Windows and get my first iPhone.

As a Microsoft fanboy, I did not sleep well last night. In case you missed it, Apple’s WWDC keynote was awesome. It was funny and informative, but above all it showcased just how powerful Apple is becoming in the software arena. As Craig Federighi walked us through a seemingly never-ending list of useful features in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, an uncomfortable truth started to dawn on me: After obtaining and sustaining supremacy in both hardware design and manufacturing, Apple is now going after Microsoft’s last bastion of defense – software. I laughed at Apple’s Switch campaign back in 2002 — but now, in 2014, I find my laughter finally subsiding and wondering if it’s time to get my first iPhone.

As I watched Federighi demo Continuity, all I could think about was: Why wasn’t Microsoft the first to implement this in Windows and Windows Phone? Continuity, which allows for the seamless handover of documents, messaging, and phone calls between Mac and iOS devices, is a fantastic display of what great software can achieve. There’s no fancy hardware tricks going on: Your Apple devices find each other on the local network, and then use some very clever software to relay data between each other. This results in some really useful functionality, such as making and receiving phone calls and texts from your Mac, allowing you to turn on your phone’s WiFi hotspot from your laptop, or simply passing incomplete email drafts from your smartphone to your Mac.

Microsoft, first and foremost, is a software company. It has thousands of developers working on Windows, Windows Phone, and related software, with relatively few of its 100,000 employees working on hardware. Apple, in contrast, is primarily a hardware company, though it has obviously beefed up its iOS and OS X departments in recent years. And yet, despite software being its forte, I can’t remember the last time that Microsoft introduced a feature to either Windows or Windows Phone that made me stop and think “hey, that’s a really neat idea.” Wi-Fi Sense for Windows Phone 8.1 was fairly cool, but if you take a look at all of the new features in OS X 10.10 and iOS 8, it’s clear that Apple’s software division is operating at a wholly higher echelon than Microsoft.

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