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 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.

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.