I was all in on the ecosystem when I was a few years younger, than I started to care about privacy, and although Apple might be good compared to it’s direct competitors, I don’t trust mega corps with all my data, nor do I support that tendency.

Also, I think it is good to not be too deep in their applications as a lot is proprietary and when you’d decide to move, they can’t be exported and used between services.

I still use their devices (phone + laptop), as I find it hard to change them, even if I think Android looks better these days (I don’t want to switch to Google services for example and with LineageOS I can’t use key applications), yet I use a minimal amount if their services (Apple Music (TV is included in a student offer), iTunes to buy movies. But stay away from iCloud in favour for open source alternatives and flexibility.

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! 

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 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.

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.

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.

Yes, but.

Overall, yes, leverage the Apple Ecosystem as far as you can - and you can quite far before “needing” alternatives. I have several Apple devices are various stripes and the integration between them is very good/nice. I have a PC (strictly for gaming) and I made some efforts to integrate it with my Apple devices, but as I don’t use it much except as a launch pad into Steam, it really doesn’t matter much.

• I use Apple Mail and probably always will. I have tried several options, but find Apple Mail works very well “for me”.
• I use Apple Calendar and probably always will. Works fine “for me”.
• I use Apple Notes for quick jots of generally disconnected information. I have tried many other Notes apps, and so many are just “too much” (Obsidian, for example, is an operating system masquerading as a note app :-) /s). I am happy that Bear recently upgraded to the long-awaited Version 2 and for my heavy-duty note lifting and writing, it’s now my go-to.
• I use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. I have used Keynote to build mid-5-figure and low-6-figure productions (I charged) for large events. It never broke on me during a run, it never crashed, and I made some good dough with it.
• I have used Final Cut Pro X and Motion to edit and release a feature length film. I actually migrated from pre-FCPX (8? 9?) to Adobe Premiere in 2010, used Adobe’s terrible products diligently for almost a decadebecause I thought I had to, but finally ditched that shit for alternatives (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Blender, Logic Pro, Affinity Suite, primarily). I just last month finally cut off our Adobe CC subs for the production company, although we kept the Adobe Stock sub.
• I use 1Password for cross-platform password management, but more-often-than-not I don’t actually use it and rely on iCloud passwords, which work perfectly fine “for me”, to the point that I am wondering if when the next rev of the OS comes out if I can ditch 1Password…
• I have iCloud+/AppleOne because 1. I wanted 2TB of iCloud storage 2. I wanted Hide My Email and VPN 3. I wanted unfettered access to AppleTV (which is great, and I am in the business anyway) and Apple Arcade (which is pretty good, awkually).
• I used to use Dropbox for professional file sharing, but after some privacy snafus on their part, I flirted with pCloud for a while (until I learned that you couldn’t “ln -s aName aNotherName” in the pCloud file system). We now have Sync.com as a non-US-based, zero-knowledge encrypted professional file sharing service and I couldn’t be happier with it. It is cheaper and more secure than Dropbox.
• I travel extensively and I use Apple Maps almost to exclusion. I also use apps like inRoute and Scenic (I ride motorcycle long-distances sometimes). I have Google Maps on my devices, but never use it (I have de-Googled myself in general, though incompletely).
• I use iMessage and FaceTime extensively and have never had a problem sending or receiving messages (that I am aware of). I especially like handing off phone calls to my other devices (for example, sitting at my laptop or desktop and my phone in the other room rings and I can call or answer on my computer).
• I use Nova (and its sister app, Transmit) for website creation (using Hugo+Bootstrap) and other low-level programming/text operations. I did use VSCode previously, but I am quite satisfied with Nova and happy to support small MacOS developers with $.
• I use Safari almost to exclusion, but Firefox in a pinch and exclusively on Windows.

I have used Linux (at one time I would build my own boxes), Windows (professionally), and macOS for decades relatively interchangeably, but in my dotage I am more and more becoming a MacOS-only user.

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.