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Are you locked into an ecosystem? If so, why?

Howl's Castle

Howl's Castle

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 13, 2016
158
170
(Ecosystem, in this case, means you use all their services)
I'm curious to see if people are locked into ecosystems by companies be it Apple, Google or Microsoft.

I would say I'm locked into the Google ecosystem. I'd like to move to Microsoft, but the OneDrive nags for a plan are annoying and so is the "Upgrade to Premium!" button in Outlook.com
(I used to be a Windows Phone user)

I prefer Google's because I just find their offerings to be better than the competition, especially Google Docs over MS Word
 
For iPhone/iPad/iMac it's Apple all the way.
My content is on iTunes. My family is on the same so it's easy to FaceTime and iMessage between devices.

For my photo work I'm tied into Adobe. I've tried a lot of the others, but works best for my needs.

Use MS office suite on my iMac or work PC.
 
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AstroAtom said:
(Ecosystem, in this case, means you use all their services)
I'm curious to see if people are locked into ecosystems by companies be it Apple, Google or Microsoft.

I would say I'm locked into the Google ecosystem. I'd like to move to Microsoft, but the OneDrive nags for a plan are annoying and so is the "Upgrade to Premium!" button in Outlook.com
(I used to be a Windows Phone user)

I prefer Google's because I just find their offerings to be better than the competition, especially Google Docs over MS Word
Click to expand...

Reference thread title, my suggestion: Are You Locked Into a Company's Product Line?

Apple fanboy said:
For iPhone/iPad/iMac it's Apple all the way.
My content is on iTunes. My family is on the same so it's easy to FaceTime and iMessage between devices.

For my photo work I'm tied into Adobe. I've tried a lot of the others, but works best for my needs.

Use MS office suite on my iMac or work PC.
Click to expand...
My Mac is for all computer related tasks except serious game playing (which is PC or consol). However, Apple is slipping with their productivity software offerings, although I still use Mac versions of the software I need, plus iPad, iPhone. :)
 
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use apple services
but
Recent years its been difficult to justify apple's high cost and lower than expected functionality so starting to move out of apple


mail, text-im apple does well for me
voice; apple's faceTime dosnt work 4me
gps apple's maps app is just ok
photo not much interest
notes use macJournal
calendar and contacts use apple but it is really dorky and leads to mistakes if your in a hurry
music use windows Media Monkey i avoid all aspects of iTunes as much as possible
video apple VLC
 
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Doesn't matter to me. The only service I care about is Spotify. As long as I've got that, I'm a happy robot.
 
Nope, not locked in.

I use part of Apple's services (mainly iMessage), part of Google's services and Dropbox. Don't like being tied to any one particular company/product/service.

Google works on my 2003-2006 era Macs so it's the major service I do use though.

But if cut off by a service tomorrow it wouldn't affect me. When you deal with the kinds of old tech I use you learn to have workarounds and adapt.
 
I'm locked in to iOS... I thought about giving android a go, but I almost excursively send messages from the iMessage app on my Mac and I don't think I could give that up.
 
to answer the OP directly... YES

my issue with apple is the declining value, co$t vs functionality Microsoft google is the time for maintenance. where to go that is any better?

95% of us only surf the web, email,text call, GPS...

Linux is a mess for home usage.
 
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Yes sort of.

I have a Chromebook Pixel, an Android phone, and a Linux desktop the only services that work completely cross platform are googles so that's what I use. I'll be deeper by spring with both Google Fi and WiFi it's an OK place to be.
 
No, I use features from MS, Google, Apple and a few others. Whichever each company has that best fits my needs, I use.

I suppose I'm a bit locked to iOS. Mainly because I hate android and transferring my old text messages would be a pain. I don't use iMessage. I've tried it and hated it. Messages were sometimes delayed by several hours and I have no other device with iMessage. So, it was pointless.
 
You're only locked if you want to be!

Glib answer I know, but perhaps the question should be: How much upheaval will you tolerate to move to a different status-quo?

Because willing or unwilling, we're all participants of technological, societal, cultural, financial, defense, nutritional and other ecosystems that came before us. Disengaging can be unfeasibly complex and you have to wonder if it's a good use of one's energy?
 
Apple fanboy said:
For iPhone/iPad/iMac it's Apple all the way.
Click to expand...

Yep, same here. The only exception is my router is a third party and NAS with content I pull directly to iTunes for Home sharing. There are issues but I'm prepared to live with that over larger storage on NAS
 
I use all apple devices and love the way they work together. I have a Apple Watch,iPhone 7+, and iPad 12.9
everything works together. My kids and I use family sharing, they have iPhones.

While there are times I feel locked to Apple, strictly due to $ spent, I love the Apple ecosystem and dont plan to leave
 
I'm very cross platform (Windows PC, Android phone, iPad) and this naturally leads to avoidance of services which require you to be all in on a particular ecosystem. However, there are a few products/services I'd be very reluctant to switch away from despite the fact that there are compelling alternatives

Microsoft Office - Too much of a hassle to collaborate with others on documents if we don't all use the industry standard.
Windows for main PC - In the field I work there are a lot of leading applications that are Windows-only. I like Mac OS, but its too much of a hassle to find alternative software or use Virtualization. There's no chance I would contemplate Chrome OS.
Gmail - I like labels (rather than folders) for organizing email and wouldn't see the point of switching after many years of use.
Dropbox - Has never let me down, even in a minor way, in years and years of use. This is pretty incredible for something as complex as sync.
iPad - Last time I checked tablet apps were still superior on iPad than Android tablets.

I don't feel locked to any media content providers as I don't really buy movies or music. I prefer to rent/subscribe.
 
For me iWork is almost perfect, just a few things to add in particular to the iCloud versions.
The features most appreciated is the integration of the apps. For instance in Pages, you can add tables and do computations with values in each of them and across tables using most of the functions in Numbers. Or keep an overview table where you keep all values of importance that are then automatically update in all other tables when you change values. For complex documents with correlated tables that is a unique feature.
 
I'm cross computer platform, but mobile remains iOS.

iOS for the ability to do what I want with my iTunes purchases and the security.

Cross platform out of necessity:

PC: learning Windows version of Office

mac OS: for my creative stuff + security (though not perfect.) Mainly, Apple's computers be they traditional systems or iOS are easy to use and when there are no issues, I still love using them.
 
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