I Tried The Complete Apple Ecosystem - Worth The Money?

technology has changed and the products that a company makes don't actually matter anymore like apple could make overpriced headphones or a heavy VR headset and and people would still buy them and even more than that they would Rave about them but did you ever wonder why that is like sure they're viewed as a premium brand and for the most part yes I agree Apple makes some fantastic products but there is a a deeper answer here you see you can no longer review just one product individually without looking at the entire ecosystem companies like Apple and Samsung have built extensive and tightly woven ecosystems of products to keep you buying their products and away from the competition but this isn't necessarily a bad thing like it ties together a lot of great features that offer incredible interoperability that otherwise just wouldn't be possible but is it actually worth it to stay in the Apple ecosystem I tested just about every Apple product on the market and every feature in the ecosystem so is the Apple ecosystem actually worth it and which products are best purchased Within ecosystem or when is it better to say buy a different pair of earbuds or or headphones and maybe it doesn't matter if you're out of the ecosystem so I want to start off before getting into this video by saying I am not an apple Fanboy or an apple hater like I use an iPhone and an Android phone every single day I have a Mac and a Windows I have a Google TV and an Apple TV I use both so I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in this video it's really a great ecosystem but I want to talk about whether or not it's actually worth it so let's take a look at what the hardware is in my ecosystem that we're going to talk about throughout this video so I have a MacBook Pro and I also use an iMac sometimes at my home or at my office I have an iPhone 14 pro I have the Apple Vision Pro I use the airpods pro and the airpods Mac sometimes I'll talk about when that is in a second I use an iPad I use an Apple TV 4K I have homepods set up with that Apple TV 4K and I use the Apple Watch series 9 so a pretty complete ecosystem within the Apple products and I've tested other ones but those are the products that I prettyy much use on a daily basis let's start off with the features of the Apple ecosystem when you're using a Mac these are some of the ones that I find the most fun and the most interesting so did you know you can actually unlock your Mac with your Apple watch so for an older iMac or other Mac devices that don't have Biometrics signing in you have to type your password every single time unless you have an Apple Watch and you can set it up so that as soon as you get near your Mac it's unlocked and you're ready to go Additionally you can use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac so you just mount it above your MacBook or your iMac and facing towards you you can use the rear camera on your iPhone for far superior quality this is what I do on almost every video call and I get so many compliments on how much better the video quality looks than basically any webcam on the market and even better than a lot of professional cameras that are wired into your computer like it just looks really good and it's so easy to do in fact you can also use this to scan documents or show a down table view no it's not the best at this like there's a lot of distortion and and it's definitely doing a lot of computation here but it still is a really easy way to get a a top- down view of your desk from your computer and in meetings that could be really important additionally of course how could we forget there is airdrop from your phone your tablet Your Vision Pro basically anything in the Apple ecosystem sharing files is so convenient so for me if I'm filming a video and I need to get a quick little segment of some other angle of the the product I film with my iPhone and I aird drop to my MacBook it's just such an easy and convenient way to do that now the opposite is also true though if I use an Android phone and I want to transfer a video from this phone right here like just a Samsung phone to my MacBook it's incredibly difficult and annoying to do I have to upload it to Google Drive because Android file transfer the app that Apple kind of made to do that doesn't really work that well it's a terrible app and it doesn't seem to work so it's very difficult to be out of the ecosystem if you're transferring files from a phone to your laptop unless you're using like Google Drive and stuff like that we also have Universal clipboard across all devices which is really great if you have say a Macbook and an iMac or you have an iPhone or an iPad any other device so if I'm working on my iPad and I find something I want to copy that and I want it to be on my Mac my MacBook I can copy it go to my MacBook and just say paste and it knows there's one clipboard across all my devices for how that's saved and additionally universal control allows you to do that even easier so I can drag my mouse over to my iPad if it's setting next to my MacBook and I can click and drag photos over I could use my mouse and keyboard from my MacBook over on my iPad it's really like one control for all of your Apple ecosystem which is really useful you can also use this in the Apple Vision Pro I'll talk about that a little bit later in the video but let's say you didn't want to have your iPad interface next to your MacBook maybe you just want two displays you can also use sidecar which is a really cool feature that allows you to either wired or wirelessly extend your display to any iPad out there just setting next to your MacBook and while this works really well meaning that it's very very convenient it's not going to be the highest resolution sometimes there could be a tiny bit of lag as well and so like it's convenient and it works but I wouldn't be watching like I wouldn't be like proof watching videos on the second display uh because like I said it's not going to be the highest quality it's a little bit compressed when they stream onto that second display so category number one like I said uh the mac and kind of tying together like the iPhone iPad MacBook that Trio I think is absolutely worth it if you have a Macbook the other two devices an iPhone and iPad are definitely worth your while and they work together so well that I think that is really the core of the ecosystem but now let's talk about airpods airpods have a lot of really cool features within the Apple ecosystem for one you have seamless switching between basically all of your Apple devices if I am working on my MacBook with my airpods listening to music and then I get a phone call on my iPhone when I answer that phone call it'll automatically pause that music and switch over switch my airpods over to the phone so I can talk on the phone with my airpods Additionally you have a really cool feature called live listen where you can set your phone down and use your airpods to listen to the microphone from your iPhone and so that could be great if you're in like a maybe a louder lecture hall or something and and you're in the back and you you have trouble hearing maybe you could set your phone closer to the front I'm not sure exactly where you would use this but it's a cool feature I mean some people use it to like like spy on their friends as a it's a joke I wouldn't recommend that but I don't know it's a feature that does exist we also have find my so if you misplace your earbuds you can not only find them by making the case chir which is really cool but you could also use uh the ultra wide band to have like a nice little navigation feature on find my that points you in the right direction and helps you find your airpods of course Siri deeply integrated and probably the coolest one in my opinion is the ability to use dual Bluetooth connectivity on an iPad or an iPhone so if I'm watching ing a movie on a plane with my wife and we both have airpods we can both connect to the same iPhone and we can listen to it at the same time you can't do that with any other Bluetooth devices on your iPhone only airpods are able to do that okay so summarizing the airpods category is it worth it to get airpods within the Apple ecosystem while I love the Dual connectivity the truth is other earbuds offer a lot of other things they can perform pretty well and they offer some other advantages in terms of different styles different Comfort levels different audio Prof profiles and of course different prices so I think this is one category that it's not essential to stay in the ecosystem for example you can switch between two devices seamlessly if you have jobber earbuds just like I said earlier in the video but if you have a lot of Apple devices if you have tons and tons of Apple devices then yes it could be more convenient to have airpods so you're able to switch seamlessly across all the devices not just two at a time okay so what about the Apple watch there's a lot of cool features here as well and and the Apple watch is probably the best integrated watch with its native phone companion it's probably I would say better than were OS watches and Android phones like Apple has been doing this for a long time we're in the ninth generation now so iMessage is absolutely everywhere that's a huge thing being able to have a full iMessage interface on your watch to reply with Emojis and voice memos and anything else you might want is really really convenient having find my for other devices and friends on your watch also super convenient you can also of course control your iPhone camera so if I set up my iPhone on like a lean it against a rock or a ledge or something and I want to take a group photo rather than like setting a timer and running over and and hoping I get in frame I can very easily use my my watch to show what the camera is seeing and line everyone up and then just you know take the photo just like that or alternatively I've seen people do this this is kind of cool you can strap your watch like around your iPhone so you're able to use the rear cameras and essentially have a viewfinder on the back of your phone so you can film yourself I'm holding a Galaxy phone right now but you get the idea uh you can film yourself using the rear cameras on your iPhone and see exactly what's in frame so you're not like cutting off the top of your head or or weirdly at an angle or something like it's a really convenient feature that I personally have used quite a bit in the past additionally we have apple wallet and apple home controls all in our Apple watch so that's super convenient so summarizing this category replying to calls and messages and and and things like that are really convenient on the Apple watch and the opposite is also true it's very inconvenient to reply to messages on a non Apple watch when you're using an iPhone Apple actually blocks iMessage from working with any quick replies or full typed out replies on any non-apple watch of course if you're using like WhatsApp or something you can usually get around this but so for this category I would like to say it's not necessary to remain in ecosystem but the truth is there just aren't really many great Apple watch Alternatives out there for iPhone users unless you want to use a sports watch like a Garmin or a sunto and and you're just focused on running and stuff like that or if you want to use a hybrid watch like a with scan watch aside from those apple watch really does make the most sense for iPhone users and that's kind of why most iPhone users end up getting an Apple watch now to the next category within this ecosystem The Vision Pro there are a lot of cool features that tie The Vision Pro into this ecosystem as well for one the Mac virtual display being able to wear my airpods Macs right here and just looking at my laptop a little bubble will appear above it and I just tap on that and I have a full virtual display of my MacBook on my Vision Pro so that's great if I'm in tight quarters and I need to work on a large space or if I just want to for fun uh use a larger display and have other Vision Pro stuff around me it's cool and it's fun to use and uh it works very well we also have universal control like I said before where you can use your Mac keyboard and your mouse within the Vision Pro so that I I use the keyboard there a lot it's so much faster for me to type using like all 10 fingers versus like my eyeballs and and pinching just easier for me and basically everything else I mentioned earlier with iPads and Macs really ties in well with the airpods ma with the Apple Vision Pro I almost call these airpods Macs with the Apple Vision Pro as well so the newest airpods Pro have the ability to connect to the Apple Vision Pro with lossless and spatial audio to give you a better more immersive experience that you really can't get with other non- airpods devices out there so for this device you definitely definitely need to be within the ecosystem and there's really no way around that now the next product being Apple TV and I want to tie in homepods here as well those two products they feel like nice accessories in the Apple ecosystem and they have some cool features of their own as well so airPlay from any Apple device is really convenient additionally handoff is a cool one too so if I just walk over to my homepods with my iPhone and it's playing some music I just tap on the top of the homepod and that music is playing on my homepods similarly if I have any photos or videos or whatever on my iPhone and I want to see them on the Apple TV I could just use a little AirPlay icon it'll cast onto my TV very easily and so that's a cool way to share photos and videos with friends uh without having to navigate to the photos app on the Apple TV another cool one is called share play so if you are I think the best example here is maybe a long-distance relationship if you want to watch a movie at the same time maybe you're FaceTiming each other and rather than like counting down like 3 2 1 and then hit play and then they're not on the same time and they they don't pause right share Play Just syncs up the movie with both people who are on the FaceTime so that's a really cool feature you can use on the Apple TV of course Apple TV and homepods also work well together you can set up your homepods as speakers for your Apple TV and stereo to give you a more immersive experience without having to buy a dedicated Soundbar or something like that so the homepod and the Apple TV have a lot of cool Apple ecosystem features and I would say they're great additions to the ecosystem but if you had an alternative say a Roku or something like that I don't think most people would really miss out on that much and similarly as long as you use Spotify or some other audio service streaming service I don't think you would miss out on getting a different smart speaker either in fact you may have some advantages getting a Google home for example cuz Google Assistant personally in my opinion is better than Siri but if you use apple music and use a lot of the Apple softwares it's definitely very convenient to be within the Apple ecosystem on products like the homepod and the Apple TV but like I said definitely not necessary and then of course the iPhone the iPhone is is really the Keystone of the entire ecosystem but there are a lot of cool ecosystem specific features that many people might not even know about so for one Apple notes of course syncs across all devices in your ecosystem but you can do some really cool things on the iPhone with Apple notes in fact I have a full video I'll link it below with some really cool Apple notes tips and tricks like you can scan documents you can search text from images you can do all types of stuff like that within Apple notes of course seamless airpods switching is so useful as I talked about earlier in this video naturally when you take any photos as long as you're using iCloud all the photos are going to be everywhere you can find them on your TV on your laptop without ever having to go and upload them or even having to airdrop them they'll just automatically be there which is super convenient and probably the coolest one in my opinion is the ability to hotspot anything in your ecosystem very very easily so as long as you're on the same Apple ID as soon as you open up your laptop if you're on a train and there's no Wi-fi there's the option to connect to your iPhone is a Hotpot and it just it's just so easy to do that and sure you could connect to an Android for a hotspot too but then you have to type in a password it's not a quick automatic thing that pops up on the very top and of course this one this last one's not really an ecosystem thing but emergency SOS is something that I personally really like a lot like I do a lot of backpacking and kind of off- grid camping and and having that just gives me more peace of mind and that's something you don't see on other devices so the iPhone like obviously this is very essential if you're in the Apple ecosystem you pretty much need an iPhone not only to update software on like your airpods to connect your Apple watch which isn't compatible with any non Apple device but also just to get fitted for the Apple Vision Pro like if you want to order the Apple Vision Pro you need an iPhone to scan your face so it can choose the right size for you unless unless you go into the store and have them do that for you but besides the hardware specific features there's some other software that makes the Apple ecosystem worth it as well software that you can't access unless you're within the ecosystem system and within the ecosystem it syncs really well between devices like Safari for one has some really cool features related to iMessage and something sending your link it'll show up really easily and it also performs really well it's optimized for Apple devices of course the second app which I think is probably the most underrated Apple app of all time is shortcuts which allows you to set up all types of crazy automations like when I arrive home send an email or do like all kinds of weird crazy things there's whole communities on how to set up different shortcuts I'm not going to get into that right now of course Siri is another one if you're into Siri personally I'm not the biggest Siri fan out there I think we might see an overhaul of Siri in the next year I'm pretty optimistic and if we do that that could be a huge feature within the Apple ecosystem but for now it's just another Voice Assistant screen time is another thing you can see exactly how long you spent on every device across your whole ecosystem not just on your phone you can see how much time you spent on your browser on your desktop and how much on your phone and things like that of course Apple keychain allows you to save save all your passwords and sync that across your whole iCloud account and as I said before find my which is not only good for finding your devices but also finding your friends which kind of brings me into the final segment of this video the ecosystem with others not just your own ecosystem but the entire network effect of the Apple ecosystems so for one you can find your friends which is really cool you know when someone is around you know when they're in town you can hang out with them I use that feature all the time and I love having find my of course iMessage we all know about that very popular in the US um and there's also some cool games and reactions and things you can do within iMessage of course FaceTime kind of is an accessory in iMessage I feel like the same to me but in my opinion all of those kind of tie into to make the Apple ecosystem some devices are great to buy outside of the ecosystem you could totally buy other earbuds but other devices just make sense to stay within the Apple ecosystem is it worth it I think it depends on one device versus the next and how intense you are going to be when you're using these other features if you're just casually using your laptop and your phone maybe they don't have to be in the same ecosystem but for a lot of people it does offer a lot of advantages but let me know what you think of the Apple ecosystem what should they add what should they maybe allow from other devices any compatibility that is definitely not there right now but I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments down below if you enjoyed the video like And subscribe I'm mik O'Brien and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Mike O'Brien

Views: 242,139

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Id: XOEylPbi9Rs

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024