Full disclosure: I'm very locked in the Apple ecosystem. They do play amazingly well with one another, but I feel like that's not at all their main selling point.

You can appreciate the longevity and continued support of an iPhone without having an Apple Watch. You can appreciate a MacBook for its OS (pre Catalina anyway) and build quality (I'm still running a 2014 model -- though I have read about recent models' issues) without having an iPhone to pair it with. To be fair, you cannot appreciate an Apple Watch without an iPhone at all since it won't do anything, and I'm no the fence about AirPods and how well they do outside the Apple world.

My point is, once you're in the ecosystem, you notice a lot of little things that may make your life easier. Are they great? Yeah absolutely. Are they what sells the product? In my opinion, not at all. Unless it happens to pinpoint your exact use case (I need to lock and unlock my MacBook 30 times a day and I'm tired of having to enter a password, I want my Apple Watch to unlock it), it's the product itself that will most likely convince you. The way they neatly play together at times is just the cherry on top, like when you notice your computer and phone now share a clipboard. That's awesome, but not a single selling point for anyone.

Now, I will be the first one to say: iTunes sucks. So, if you do buy an iPhone, it makes sense IMO to shed out the extra 99ct a month for iCloud storage.

While there are cheap computers that don't last well, pretty much any computer at the price point of an Apple computer will last at least five years, in fact they will probably last several times that. Additionally, Thinkpads for example have full user service manuals and often support users repairing or upgrading parts such as RAM and storage that explicitly maintains the warranty.

That's awesome! I have been using a Linux-running Thinkpad at work for almost three years now and I absolutely love it.

I didn't want my comment to sound like I'm saying Apple does it best. I just wanted to drive the point home that I don't think it's mainly the ecosystem that makes Apple devices fun to use.

As a side note, I wasn't talking hardware that lasts 5 years. We all know most devices on the market now can pull that off, bar one battery-replacement. I was rather talking continued software updates, where iOS is certainly in the lead.

Edit: just re-read your comment and you were talking Apple computers specifically. Oh well :)

FWIW, you don't need to be in the Apple ecosystem to have features like having a secondary device auto-unlock your laptop or desktop. Windows has supported a paired device unlocking your user account for a while now, and it does not have to be a manufacturer specific device. Logging in with devices like Yubikeys is also a supported login method.

That's fair! I guess a side-effect of being locked up in one ecosystem is that you only rarely notice what's happening in others.

I feel like that only furthers my original point though. I didn't want to argue that Apple does it best, only that you can enjoy their devices without being fully bought into the ecosystem.