iCloud private relay is highly underrated for privacy imo. You won’t hear a lot of agreement with me here, but it’s the best form of a privacy vpn. When you use a third party vpn you still have to trust the vpn company to respect your privacy whereas private relay, by definition, does not allow Apple or anyone else to scrape your data.

I love the integration of the apple ecosystem like the airdrop, copy/paste on any device, apple tv keyboard on my iphone, etc. It is very convenient. I’ve also encountered lesser problems with using apple products and they last longer! Our family still have an ipad 2, iphone 7 & 8, even the ipod, and all of them still work fine for games, youtube and safari.

I’m not “all-in” in the software side tho. I use apple software but I still have gmail, 1password, and microsoft office. I had more software but since most started to become subscription only, I had to retain only the important ones.

I used to have the “Apple for hardware , google for software” mentality. I’d use google mail, calendar, maps, drive, chrome…on my apple products.

But recently I’ve noticed myself slowly migrate to Apple. I have Apple One family (not premier ) which is worth it IMO.

Apple Maps feels less invasive than Google maps and they’ve upped their game recently.

Safari has become my default browser with Ecosia as the default search engine. Love that Safari shares tabs across devices.

I still have Google mail and calendar installed though. I prefer the UI.

The copy paste ability across devices is something I use daily too.

Mostly cross-platform suggestions:

Apples to chuck:

• Apple Music ymmv, I have lots of mp3 with iTunes match that’s why I use it, but if you don’t, Spotify is clearly the better algorithmic music suggestion service
• Podcasts are probably better in Overcast etc.
• FaceTime / Messages is fine for apples to apples, but you’ll need other messaging apps obvs
• Carrot Weather is better than Apple Weather, shame about Dark Sky
• Calculator is bested by PCalc
• Arguments can definitely be made against Logic and Final Cut
• Apple News is pain
• On that note, even with the highest tier of iCloud, it’s probably not worth it to do Apple One until your are actually spending over that much on things you actually want. Apple TV for example is easy to binge through every few months.
• Kindle is cheaper than iBooks
• Fantastical is a great calendar replacement
• Obsidian is great if you’re a Notes power-user

Apples to keep:

• iCloud and keychain are probably the best if you’re all-Apple, but back up elsewhere or consider other cloud storage solutions and 1Password. Definitely sign up for lowest tier iCloud as it unlocks a lot of functionality.
• I prefer iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) to ms office
• See Apple Music above if you have your own mp3s or old iTunes purchases
• iCloud Photo Library is getting better and is very convenient
• Find My is great if you have AirTags, use it all the time on my keys

That’s all I can think of rn! Personally I go for rational functionality over philosophy as I think that’s a trap! They’re just computers, don’t not use stuff based on principle if it works the best, but also don’t get sucked in by the hype, they make it as easy as possible to eat all your money! 

I am now at the point where I have a MacBook iPhone iPad and watch with the 50gb iCloud account. I’d still try to keep some aspects flexible since Apple really tries to lock you into their ecosystem as you probably know. Therefore I use Nextcloud for calendar and todos (Apple supports WebDAV quite well) and obsidian for notes, synced via Nextcloud. For photos I haven’t found a suitable alternative to iCloud sync since Apple prevents reliable background sync in other apps. In terms of benefits I would say an iPhone and MacBook give you the most synergy and everyday task coverage. I’m not really using the iPad often and don’t get much real world benefit out of the watch besides timers, current weather and the date. Mail providers all sync well via Apple mail, so I see no real reason to go for Apple here. For passwords, the Apple system is more convenient but you also need an Apple device around (or Apple software on windows). For this I went with KeepassXC since it’s open source and runs on everything. The KeePassium app works well on iOS and integrates with the password dialogue. I sync my password database via Nextcloud.

So my personal opinion is: Apple is nice and useful but I try to keep some freedom from their sometimes erratic policies. With my current setup I feel like I can switch away from Apple quite fast. I hope this helps a bit for perspective.

Definitely don’t go all in at once if you’re not even sure you need the things.

I have an iPhone, watch, MacBook, and AppleTV4k. My wife has a phone, watch, and iPad.

I picked them up one by one as I thought they would be beneficial. I switched from a pixel to an iPhone first. After a few months of having the phone I decided to get a cheap se watch to see if I would even use it. It was great so I upgraded to a series 8 when they came out. I have a big windows pc but didn’t have anything portable and using my phone for some things was becoming annoying, so I grabbed an m1 MacBook Air on sale for I think $700 after the M2 was released and it’s been very nice.

We picked up the AppleTV4k because our Vizio tv suuuuucks with the built in OS and quit working a lot. So we needed a standalone smart system. I have had chromecasts forever but figured that since we already pay for Apple One that getting the Apple TV would integrate better. And it has.

My wife prefers tablets to laptops so the iPad works great for her. If you do a ton of work on your laptop though, you can airplay to an iPad as a second screen which is handy.

As for the software, like I mentioned we already have Apple One so I use iCloud for pretty much everything. I use keychain for all my passwords. I use the native health app. Only one I don’t use is mail. I still use gmail for that.

I don’t have home pods or anything. We had a couple of google homes and they have ended up just sitting in a box because we don’t use them. I may end up getting a couple of them to use as a cheaper stereo system for the TV but we’re having our new house pre-wired for in ceiling surround sound so I doubt it. Might grab one for music in the kitchen or something but that’s pretty low on the list of things I want lol.

Guess it depends what you define as OK.

Sure, everything will work fine, but it might not be the optimal workflow for all purposes.

It’s like saying is one paintbrush good for applying paint in your house. Sure it’ll probably get it on there but depends on the purpose and finish you desire.