The author is 100% correct but forgot 1 other Apple service, iCloud Photos (maybe they lumped that in with Drive?) which is far from perfect but is a huge boon for everyone that used to have to deal with "I (somehow destroyed) my phone, how can I get my pictures off it?". "Find My" is another mostly bright spot, it does work very well (especially when sharing location with friends/family). I agree completely on how trash Apple is at any sort of web service (iMessage, iCloud Photos, Find My being the exceptions), literally everything else is an afterthought.
I quite like my Apple hardware but I shy away from all their services or at least not use them for anything important/critical. Also Apple services don't often work with other products/services. For example, you can play Apple Music on Echo's but it's a subpar experience verses something like Spotify.
Now that I think about it, I really do avoid Apple's stuff by and large:
- Mail -> Google Apps (Gmail)
- Calendar -> Google Calendar
- Maps -> I do use Apple Maps, but also Google Maps and Waze
- Reminders -> Things (but I do use Apple Reminders as well, it just sucks)
- Music -> Spotify
- Drive -> Dropbox/Syncthing
- Books -> Kindle
- Weather -> Carrot
And I'm sure there are more. One thing Apple (had? has? probably "had") going for it was a lot of it's services (and apps for that matter) handle the 80% use-case and are good "default" for most people and there are power-user apps/services you can reach for if Apple's doesn't meet the bar. That is slowly not being the case and it's really sad to see (as much as one can feel sad/sorry for a massive company, moreso I'm sad for what was lost.