migrating to google apps for parallel functionality

i have gotten really frustrated with - as a for instance - not being able to open a calendar appointment address in google maps and in thinking about this i am imagining that this OS centric approach is causing similar, though slightly less obvious, inconveniences in my personal and business workflow.

i read a nice NYT article today and decided to try to migrate to google apps to use this ecosystem as a kind of parallel universe to see how i get on with this issue. of course i will keep all my apple apps which i dearly love and which i imagine will have additional functionality if i use them in parallel with the google apps.

i am considering Google Calendar, Google Contacts, GMail and Chrome on a laptop, desktop and iPhone.

anyone have any suggestions, strong words of caution or good advice based upon their experience with this?

i am a business type user and i really need this kind of thing to work more seamlessly.

additionally i am /happy/ to pay for apple or third party apps if they will integrate these items more seamlessly.

THANKS for any help.