Apple Maps requires you to buy a device whos content is completely controlled by a single corporation and is fully locked down by pervasive DRM.
It doesn't really fit the tone of the article.
Instead of !g, you can use !s to use Startpage, which uses Google results, but privately.
Or you can actually add the engines you use to your browser and skip the middle man.
Did you give a recent try to Apple Maps? Just finishing a few months road trip across the US and to my surprise I vastly prefer Apple Maps for the navigation and I now default to it. While in France I can't live without Waze/Google Maps because it's so efficient to workaround congestions in real time, I found it no better than Apple Maps in the US.
Otherwise I agree there is no alternative for Youtube. The move from Gmail was the easiest, and Search to DDG not really hard (with the !g keyword still handy for tech or complexes searches).