Putting Your Eggs in One Basket
I was reading a post the other day about how someone would struggle to move away from Apple as they're all in with them. I can understand this, as it nearly happened to me too.
For the life of me I can't find the post, but it was on someone's personal blog. If I find it, I'll update this post, but in the meantime, the gist of the post was that they were struggling with Apple's ever diminishing reputation, but they were so entrenched into their ecosystem that they thought it would be nigh on impossible to move away.
This resonated with me, as I nearly ended up in the same boat. I got my first iPad around a decade ago, then around seven years ago, I ditched Android and added an iPhone SE to my Apple collection. After that I got an Apple watch, then Apple TV, and finally an M1 MacBook Air.
Along the way I slowly migrated a lot of the services that were scattered across the internet to either Apple based ones, or apps/services that were only available in the Apple ecosystem. Notes, Photos, Drive, Reminders, Calendar, Contacts, RSS feeds etc. Honestly, it was a pleasant and convenient place to be.
Realising my mistake
I can't remember when it dawned on me exactly, but at some point I realised that I was neck deep in the Apple ecosystem, and it wasn't a good idea. Especially when you read horror stories about people being all in on 1 provider, then being completely locked out. I prefer to have more control than that.
So, over time I took steps to broaden my horizons and now I don't use any single provider to a degree where it would significantly impact me if they went away, or locked me out.
- My photos and files are synced to my Synology (they're fantastic bits of kit).
- RSS is hosted by Miniflux.
- Email & calendar are provided by Zoho, and have been for years because they're brilliant.
- Contacts are synced via CardDAV to my Synology, but I could easily switch them to Zoho, or Google if I wanted.
- Notes are synced with Joplin via WebDAV to my Synology.
- Reminders are with Google, as I'm now using a Pixel 9a as my phone.
- I still have my Apple TV, as it's great. But we have Roku sticks elsewhere in the house and I could easily switch to one of those.
- My laptop is now a Framework 13, which is fabulous!
- I still have my old iPad Air 3 next to the bed for reading RSS feeds and a bit of YouTube, but that could be any device really.
An evolution
I didn't go into this process deliberately wanting to eradicate all of Apple from my digital life, but that's pretty much how it ended up evolving. Not because I wanted to, but because as time went on, I realised there were lots of great alternatives out there that I could use, that are just as pleasant and just as convenient.
I don't spend a tonne of time managing this stuff. Actually, I spend hardly any time on it at all. It all just ticks along nicely in the background. But the advantage here is that if one of these platforms or services go poof! I'm not in the shit. I'll just move to an alternative and carry on. Even if it's an immediate thing, all these services are setup in such a way that I either have backups, data synced locally, or a good alternative I can quickly switch to.
So, to the person who's blog post I can no longer find, don't feel like you're stuck in the Apple ecosystem, or any other ecosystem for that matter. These companies make a shit tonne of profit from these services, so they want to keep you there. But with a bit of time, patience and research, it's easy enough to move away. Whether you should or not, is totally up to you, though. 🙃