I love my MacBook Air. It is perfect: screen, keyboard, battery life, speed, etc... I just don't want to be in the Apple Ecosystem any more. So I thought, "I'll just use different apps.". I am here to report that it is no big deal.

I am no longer logged into iCloud and it is just fine.

As for apps, it is pretty simple:
1. Terminal
2. Zed for text editing
3. Firefox for browsing
4. Bitwarden for password management

I still use the Dictionary app which comes with macOS and Notes but everything is local.

Ultimately, it is not as big a deal as I thought it would be. In fact, it is nice to use a Mac as a tool and not get sucked into the ecosystem pull which adds up. Say you get Apple One Premiere for your family so that you have the cloud storage, music, etc... $37.95 isn't that much a month, right... well that is $455.50 a year. That is a lot of money.

I think people have forgotten it is perfectly fine to store files on a computer locally, buy a cheap SSD and then just back the files up.

You can just use Spotify for music and listen to periodic commercials. It really isn't that bad.

Anyway, it is a good exercise to explore what is out there, prioritize owning your data and not locking yourself into ecosystems and vendors.