Back to Mac

Today I’ll order a new MacBook Pro (well, technically tomorrow as I’m writing this on Sunday night). If you had told me a year ago that I would be going back to a Mac from Linux I wouldn’t have believed you. The thing is I loved using Pop!_OS and I really did find Android to be better for me than iOS is today.

My needs for tech, however, had other plans so in January I started moving back to Apple products and promised my family that is where I would stay for a bit.

While I miss Linux and Android, my family, especially my parents, missed having me on FaceTime and Apple Photos. My wife missed more stable tech as something I was self hosting was always “having issues” and trying to work with me on pretty much anything had become something of a nightmare for everyone.

At one point I had thought maybe I wouldn’t even need a personal laptop, that an iPad would be enough. It isn’t. For better or for worse I still need a laptop for personal projects and so many other little things that the iPad doesn’t do well at. That’s fine.

What’s not so fine is that going back to Mac feels like some level of personal failure. I failed to plan my tech to work with my whole family where we’ve historically shared a lot of things online. I setup self-hosted services that failed to plan for my wife and for the maintenance that would be needed should anything happen to me. Mostly I failed to plan for even what my own needs are.

Linux and Android was a great combo for me and would be still if I lived in a bubble. That is definitely not the case. Now that I understand the issue I can do something about it.

So what will I do with a Mac? First and foremost I’ll get back into self-hosting with an emphasis on something Joy can maintain should something happen to me. In addition, I’ll spend the time to build services my family can use without a host of issues. I’ve moved my parents to Signal already and all of us are interested in better privacy. They wouldn’t mind something “better” than Apple.

Whatever we find to be better than Apple has to be one thing above all others… Sustainable by all of us not just me.

In the meantime, I’m just going to be glad to have a laptop again where I can work on any personal projects.

Onward and upward, right?