I need to know what people are doing recently because most of the documentation I'm finding online is from 3-5 years ago and I want the most up-to-date information.
It's just bigger than any amount I've ever dealt with in my whole life (I'm 30) and also it's hard to find solutions to manage it without running into bandwidth caps and also things are running for a very long time on the client side: days or weeks.
I think that the future of computer customization is in virtualization. Instead of having a single very expensive machine to upgrade, we just go grab 30 servers from a bulk seller and use something like Xen or Proxmox to use them all as a single machine with 1 virtual CPU, 1 virtual disk and 1 virtual network interface. Got another computer? Just add it to the pool. So while computers are getting harder to disassemble, it's also getting easier to pool them together to share compute, network and storage.
Apple owns your operating system, your hardware. It sells networking devices, printers, misc. peripherals. It offers service as software replacements, for email, file hosting, navigation, speech recognition. Apple has a marketplace for software. It has a marketplace for books. It has a marketplace for multimedia entertainment. It has its own tv. You can handcuff an apple device to your wrist, and let them own your watch, your voice, your fingerprints. Get your head out of the sand.
Do you like the idea of Apple owning the operating system you use, the computer it runs on, all the apps running on that operating system, the entire network stack, all of the network services, the gym you visit, the money you use, the school you attend, the church where you worship, the food that you buy, the place where you work, the hospital where you die?