That's precisely what stopped me from buying into the Apple cosmos.
If I want an Apple Watch, I need to buy an iPhone. If I buy an iPhone, I should use iTunes. In order to get a version of iTunes that isn't atrocious, I need to use OSX. In order to use OSX I need to buy an iMac or MBP.
Want to use an iPod? Same thing, just skip the first step.
Want to develop apps for (or port apps to) iOS? Again, same thing.
I'm using Linux. I occasionally use Windows for testing in IE or playing games. There's just no way I can adopt any Apple device as an addition to that without getting an experience that is significantly lacking in comparison to what I would get by switching everything over.
As I speak I'm using a Dell laptop, a Samsung smartphone and an Asus tablet. I'm actually in the process of replacing the Dell laptop with a smaller brand laptop custom-built for Linux support. There's just no way I could justify moving any single device over to an Apple equivalent without moving everything else.
You could call it "synergy" or "network effects". Before Apple (when Microsoft did it) we used to call it vendor lock-in and monoculture.
The funny part is that I'm pretty sure that if you ignore the lower end market most of the criticism I've heard about each brand is perfectly interchangeable at this point. "My smartphone bends / overheats", "I installed an update and now something is misbehaving, but it's not big enough of a deal that I can be bothered to figure out how to fix it", "my laptop was faulty and I had to get it replaced/repaired two weeks after I bought it", "the OS does something incredibly annoying and there apparently isn't any way to change that so I rely on clunky workarounds" and so on. I swear I've heard some variation of each for Linux, Microsoft and Apple devices alike.
This isn't really a complaint, more of an observation. Buying Apple is perfectly reasonable, especially if all your other devices are already Apple. But after having seen people be ridiculously productive on all kinds of devices (e.g. a sensible PHP dev using Windows Surface as a laptop -- that one caught me off guard) and likewise also seeing every single variation fail at other times, I would recommend not to give your favourite vendor too much credit. In all likelihood the "perfect" experience you're having with your platform of choice is not unique to you or that platform -- it just happens to be something that works really great for you right now. It might not work as well for someone else, or even for yourself at a different time in a different situation.
If I want an Apple Watch, I need to buy an iPhone. If I buy an iPhone, I should use iTunes. In order to get a version of iTunes that isn't atrocious, I need to use OSX. In order to use OSX I need to buy an iMac or MBP.
Want to use an iPod? Same thing, just skip the first step.
Want to develop apps for (or port apps to) iOS? Again, same thing.
I'm using Linux. I occasionally use Windows for testing in IE or playing games. There's just no way I can adopt any Apple device as an addition to that without getting an experience that is significantly lacking in comparison to what I would get by switching everything over.
As I speak I'm using a Dell laptop, a Samsung smartphone and an Asus tablet. I'm actually in the process of replacing the Dell laptop with a smaller brand laptop custom-built for Linux support. There's just no way I could justify moving any single device over to an Apple equivalent without moving everything else.
You could call it "synergy" or "network effects". Before Apple (when Microsoft did it) we used to call it vendor lock-in and monoculture.
The funny part is that I'm pretty sure that if you ignore the lower end market most of the criticism I've heard about each brand is perfectly interchangeable at this point. "My smartphone bends / overheats", "I installed an update and now something is misbehaving, but it's not big enough of a deal that I can be bothered to figure out how to fix it", "my laptop was faulty and I had to get it replaced/repaired two weeks after I bought it", "the OS does something incredibly annoying and there apparently isn't any way to change that so I rely on clunky workarounds" and so on. I swear I've heard some variation of each for Linux, Microsoft and Apple devices alike.
This isn't really a complaint, more of an observation. Buying Apple is perfectly reasonable, especially if all your other devices are already Apple. But after having seen people be ridiculously productive on all kinds of devices (e.g. a sensible PHP dev using Windows Surface as a laptop -- that one caught me off guard) and likewise also seeing every single variation fail at other times, I would recommend not to give your favourite vendor too much credit. In all likelihood the "perfect" experience you're having with your platform of choice is not unique to you or that platform -- it just happens to be something that works really great for you right now. It might not work as well for someone else, or even for yourself at a different time in a different situation.
tl;dr: everybody poop. All systems fail.