I dunno about a canary. The Apple ecosystem is awesome. It now has pretty awesome competition, but it is still pretty polished.
To be honest, I haven’t experienced its full power as I only have owned MacBooks and iPods. No iPhone, no iPad. I’ve been using a MacBook Pro and Lumias for the last 3 years (first 900, now 1020, wife just got a 635). Honestly, I love the iPhone 6 and the iWatch as hardware, but I love the modular interface of Windows and don’t want to give that up. Windows Phone 8.1 is awesome, and the Windows ecosystem convergence is accelerating pretty rapidly with updates every few months.
Although I’m not 100% Apple, I do think people are a bit overly jaded and cynical about Apple’s new stuff. It’s an amazing smartphone. Now it’s also your wallet. And they make a watch that is your wallet, and your fitness, and Apple quality, and completely personalizable. They just hired Marc Newson. What more do people want? They were just spoiled by the rapid succession of the original iPhone and iPad but don’t stop to think that giant leaps like that don’t happen very often, only maybe once or twice a decade.
If anything, this cynicism just reinforces the fact that most people don’t really understand how design innovation is achieved. But I completely agree about the closed ecosystem point.