Most of us in Lemmy know the importance of privacy and owning your devices in a big tech owned world (me included) but for once I thought to make the opposite question and ask if there are products by them that you actually use and enjoy them.
Important to say, I mean products you use even though there are alternatives, not monopolies like YouTube.
I love my Google Home and how it’s connected to my Phillips Hue bulbs. I love being able to just yell “hey Google, nightlight” when I stumble home after a long night out, no need to fight with switches and too-bright lights after drinking
I use Home Assistant to connect all the proprietary trash together but talk to my Watch rather than a smart speaker. I just haven’t got into the speaker lifestyle thus far.
No one product, but more of a collection of technologies underlying the Apple ecosystem. For example, AirDrop or Continuity (drafting something on one device and continuing/finishing on another).
Universal Control is pretty magical. I love having both my work and personal laptops connected to an ultrawide monitor and using my mouse/keyboard (actually Magic Trackpad, Magic Keyboard) across the two.
When I’m waiting for something for work I can slide the cursor over and do something on my personal computer.
My only paranoia is that the work laptop can track what I’m typing but that’s why I use the peripherals connected to the personal laptop to control everything.
I have too many to name honestly but one that comes to mind (but not really “big”) is a travel router.
It’s amazing being able to VPN into either my cloud server or home network all over an encrypted WireGuard tunnel. I use the same SSID/password as my home network so that I only connect the travel router itself to whatever network (Ethernet, WiFi and even hotel WiFi with the terrible portal) and all my devices just automatically get online.