Apple, Apps, and Ecosystems - 12

My primary laptop is a Windows computer. My phone is an iPhone. After using this system for years, I've come to appreciate the ability to sync outside of the built-in Apple ecosystem. I can't tell you how many times I've seen an app with a sync feature that I can't use - at no fault to the developers, two platforms is already hard enough - or how quietly annoying it is to discover that there's a mac app but no windows versions. At least it forced me to use more open-source software.

Anyway, I just got an old 2012 Mac. Needless to say, I'm hyped: I now can use Xcode, Airmessage, Littlesnitch, Alfred, etc. - all stuff I've seen everywhere but never had a chance to try. I've been heavily resisting a move to iCloud - I prefer to keep my data somewhere I can manage myself (and quickly copy, if need be), and there aren't any viable E2EE options that I'm aware of, but right now it is looking reaaaallly nice. (I briefly set up a Nextcloud instance, but uh... it didn't work out, for reasons I won't get into right now. Stupid stuff.)

Further experimentation is required to decide my opinion of Apple's products as a whole. At least it's generally pretty secure.