My family’s home computer was a MacMini (running Mavericks). As a high schooler at the time, I loved the simplicity of navigation and creation. My first smartphone was an iPhone 5s.

I stuck with them for my undergrad because I didn’t know otherwise. Windows felt like a downgrade at the time and gnu+linux or bsd were not on my radar.

I loved the hardware. I loved the integration between my mac and my phone. I learned to use the command line and make my mac incredibly powerful and fast. Its the hardware and software I used throughout my undergraduate and graduate programs and I continue to use it in my career in the museum field.

I now hop back and forth between macOS and FreeBSD, but it’s all on Apple hardware.

The first and foremost thing for me is aesthetics. I love being able to customize all of the colors and blur effects and button layout. Additionally, I like the gesture support within the UI. Lastly, I love how it integrates with Last.fm so all of my scrobbles are synced up without needing to scan.

I would not consider it a must have, but it makes so many quality of life improvements for apple music listeners.

macOS: iTerm - terminal emulator Alfred - application launcher (and a lot more) Spark - email client DevonThink - finder replacement FuzzyTime - show time in menu bar rounded by 5 minutes Bartender - organize menu bar LosslessSwitcher - automatically switch sample rate and but depth based on music playing SoundSource - easily control sound input/output and levels PDFExpert - PDF editor Reeder - RSS reader Affinity Creative Suite - Rastor/Vector/Photo/Print enditor

iOS: Timepage/Actions - Calendar and task manager Marvis Pro - Apple Music client Authenticator - FOSS authentication app MusicSmart - lists details of songs and albums not otherwise mentioned or credited Aftership - simple and free shipment tracker Carrot Weather - A great weather app PCalc - a customizable calculator Overcast - a better podcast player

iPadOS: Mela - Recipe browser and ingredient checklist maker Procreate - iPad 2D art at its best Affinity Photo - Great port of a really powerful photo editor PDFExpert - Edit PDFs but with the addition of an Apple Pencil and little niceties as well as good for note taking all in one space.

I keep things simple and use Spotlight for most navigation.

There are a lot of advantages to committing to the Apple ecosystem. While every company must be given a high level of scrutiny for their actions, it is pretty easy to make this commitment, so long as you can afford to do so monetarily.

The hardware all talks to each other really well (generally) and their software works best on their hardware (generally). But if you need flexibility in your workflow, Apple is not going to provide that for you. They have gotten a lot better over the years, but ultimately if your way of working differs from their style, you’re sol.