I have mentioned before that I constantly have a “technological battle” going on in my head. Because I’m such a diehard geek, I’m always analyzing and comparing and contrasting what setup around technology works best for me. Do I want to go full blown geek and stick to Linux? Is the fit and finish* of relying on Apple products helping to reduce friction in my life? Can I find what I’m looking for? Do I find my color selections on pleasing?
This is a constant struggle in my head and if I dwell too much on these things I start to lose things, things like documents and my to do lists and the like.
I’m trying to reign this in, but there is no one, complete solution for any of this. I favor using Linux for everything but it needs more care and feeding than I sometimes want to give it. Apple products lean towards locking my data into Apple and that’s it and that bothers me. I haven’t really been interested in Windows in a long while but I suppose that’s an option.
I know this is a first world problem. With the way my brain is wired it takes way too much of my bandwidth. I’ve been obsessed with these things for years. I need to figure out how to bring it in.
Just a little personal point of view: I’m on Apple (98%) and Windows (2%) on my computer and I can guarantee managing macOS without giving close to zero data to Apple is totally possible. I have a /uses/ page on my website and a couple of pages/posts where I outline tools I use and principles I follow. Being ‘walledgardened’ by anyone is definitely not one of them.
I have zero iCloud activated on my Mac and the fact I’ve been using an Android phone (mostly de-Googled) for the last 4 years is proof that syncing stuff between macOS and Android can be done with minimal effort. Apple has convinced pretty much everyone though their relentless campaing of screaming how *convenient* is to be in their walled garden. To me it isn’t, and I enjoy the freedom I have outside of it.
For me the key is having local NAS backups of what’s important. Every month, on the first (so, yes, still in the process for March) I backup my email, calendars, contacts, bookmarks, drives (currently iCloud and OneDrive), and Photos from WHEREVER they’re being hosted onto my local NAS. If something goes south with whomever is holding my data I lose a month of data at most. This has really taken the stress out of migrating between all these services and providers.
Currently I’m using Microsoft for email hosting (with forwarding to iCloud) because I like that they can host my 40-someodd domains and I’m using OneDrive because iCloud Drive SUCKS. Otherwise I’m in the Apple ecosystem for all other services and hardware.
After MANY years of bouncing around this seems to be a nice place to be. I’ve given up on Google for anything other than YouTube and Voice.