Leaving Apple status and Linux
Mastodon is a closed bubble at times especially around tech drama. Get a few people angry at a big tech company or service, and the bubble grows. Sprinkle some moral and ethics into the drama and the anger continues to spread. This past week was Apple's turn. A post was shared about the company doing wrong to a long time user. I mean, look at the state of the world, I'm not surprised.
The signs are all there but many people will simply ignore it and just complain. "It is what it is in order for me to participate in society." Sure, you do you. We have family and friends who live like this and if we explain to them there is an alternative to their computing needs, they put their blinders back on. Okay.
During my journey of finding balance between what I want my computing usage to be and still find common ground with family and friends, I am close to a solution. The solution will never be set in stone, but close to it. Years I've tried various alternative solutions from one extreme to another but it never worked and I came back to Apple. In 2025, big tech is giving us even more reasons to protect our own data by self-hosting or simply saving our data at home on a NAS or external backup device instead of their clouds.
As I clean up my backups on my Synology DS220j, a fun idea came to me, use the NAS as the core system and laptops and desktops can be used as thin clients. This under powered NAS can't be as good for this as their higher end models, but I could use it as my data storage and managing photos, etc. without installing programs and data on my main computers. The Synology software is accessible via any web browser and appears similar to most desktops. This also keeps everything organized similar to a file server used to be. I can turn off my computers every day and just have this little device running using limited electricity. It is easily accessible from the iPhone and I'll have to figure out how to access it with GrapheneOS. I think this would be a safer environment in case my old computers die and I wouldn't lose important data.
Before the end of the year, I'm planning to sell or trade in all my Apple products except the iPhone. That one device will still allow me to operate to some extent with family and friends. I'll keep the old AppleTVs around for my family and any old Mac's that I can install Linux or BSD on, this allows me to have test machines to tinker around too. This became so much easier for me when Apple changed their operating systems this year. I don't like using Mac OS any longer and iOS isn't that much better.
I do feel better getting closer to this solution of balance with my journal notebooks. Being offline more has its perks and the bonus of feeling healthier from not knowing what the world status is or my friends and family ongoing status. Not all of us can make a clean break but if you can start little by little, you may get back more of your own digital life and not leave it in the hands of big tech in case they deactivate your accounts.