I’ve mentioned before that my interest in technology manifested itself when I was quite young. In the mid to late 1970s retail outlets were moving from traditional mechanical cash registers to electronic point of sale systems. I remember Sears being a leader in the space, but other chains were moving to electronic cash registers as well and I found all the buttons and lights fascinating, and even more so, I found the connectivity between these machines and the computers hidden from customer view to be even more intriguing.
Kmart was a bit late to a standardized computing approach, and I’ve written about the history of their point of sale growth on my more geek oriented site: Vintage Point of Sale. So why am I talking about this here?
In 1985 Kmart hired David Carlson on board to lead the effort to fix their struggling migration to modern computing solutions. I very much admire the approach he took to the effort. Instead of focusing on a complete, vendor specific solution to the problem, he and his team designed an architecture based on what was best suited for the corporation’s needs. In short, this meant that while Kmart may have had IBM PCs in the back office, they could be running IBM, NCR, or Fujitsu cash registers up front. Solutions focused on connectivity and data could be shared easily, without being behind a “walled garden”.
I like this and this is the approach I take to my personal computing needs.
I no longer allow my personal data to live behind a walled garden. This means my photos are not locked into iCloud, my notes are not locked into Apple Notes, and todo lists are not locked into a proprietary task management system. Aside from video editing, anything I do on a computer can be done with MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, or even Windows, if I was in the mood to do that sort thing. This does not mean I rely on web portals for access to my data. Working with iCloud in a non-Apple environment for anything outside of email is a surprising exercise in frustration.
This approach has allowed me to migrate away from proprietary and often costly services. I have a NAS, or Network Attached Storage device, sitting on the network here at home. It has all the storage I need and could ever need with its expandability. The Western Digital PR4100 is pretty much plug and play, has file redundancy, and I can use an app on my iPhone to make sure all of my photos and other files are backed up. It has been worth every penny of my initial investment and more importantly, it saves on iCloud file storage monthly costs and does not strand my data into that “walled garden”. I can get to my data from any computer I choose. This is a beautiful thing.
Another area where I’ve opened up my data is with my “Personal Wiki”. I am now keeping all my notes, journals, etc. in Obsidian. Obsidian’s files are stored on my local computers using plain text markdown formatted files. I pay for the sync service and I have yet to find a file sync service that works better that Obsidian. It really “just works”, and like my personal computing management rules, the data is accessible from any computing platform I happen to be in the mood to use at the moment. Here’s a quick start video I found to be helpful.
Moving away from vendor specific solutions is allowing me to no longer be reliant on Apple or Dell or Microsoft or anybody for my future computing needs. I’m able to use my existing hardware for as long as it lasts without having to move to new computers just to move away from a specific vendor. I’m all about saving money these days, I’m all about controlling my data, and most importantly, I’m all about having options.
In these times where corporations are making morally grey area (to put it nicely) choices, it’s good to have options. Don’t lose your precious photos or other data to the whims of a corporation.
