I could be best described as a “systems guy” I design and build systems to interact and work with other systems. Most of the times the systems are pre-built and I have to just do the interconnecting, other times it’s much more complicated. At home I’ve carried over this philosophy for the most part, I’m so deep into the Apple ecosystem it’s not even funny. You know what stuff truly just works though, so if it works for me then I’m good with it. I have philosophical reasons for not being all in on Google and Microsoft is firmly in the services side outside of Surface and Xbox.
I still maintain presences in Google and Microsoft domains, if you had to ask me which one was primary I would say Microsoft as I actually pay for their services. I have Google because it’s basically a utility for the internet at this point in North America.
With all that being written, I have made some decidedly interesting choices over the years in terms of where to put my ecosystem dollars. On the digital media front I’m iTunes almost 100% except for books, I’m all in on Amazon Kindle for books. In home audio I’ve gone a decidedly “Switzerland” route mainly because there was no Apple entry till late last year, and when it comes to audio I don’t want an assistant I want good sounding music. So SONOS is my platform of choice for the home audio side of things. And honestly their stuff works quite nicely across all mediums and and it sounds really good. Once you buy one, you won’t be able to stop.
So the one place where I’ve looked and haven’t really made a commitment is home automation. Part of it is out of lack of wanting yet more devices on my WiFi, but at the same time the overall ecosystems are becoming robust enough to warrant consideration. When you look at the major ecosystems out in the wild there are three that stand out… Apple HomeKit, Google Weave, and Nest. Nest already has a beach head in my home with a thermostat and a couple of smoke detectors, which other then helping the thermostat figure out when I’m home aren’t much worth the price of admission. Looking at the history I tend to go with ecosystems where there is a solid marriage between hardware and software.
Ecosystems are great until you don’t have any body supporting you or the company discontinues it. At least with hardware there is a chance that your stuff gets sucked up by someone else, but eventually everything dies.