iPhone, Mac and Linux

Hello friends, it has been awhile since I have posted to this blog and thought I would update you on some things. I had continued swapping between Android and iPhone for many years. I like iPhones but always felt constrained by the way Apple implements things on the iPhone. So I would switch back to Android for the customization and open nature of the platform. I would always miss the rock solid reliability and consistency of iPhones though. I would also get annoyed at glitches and issues with the way Android did things. The inconsistency between pixel devices and software fragmentation was an annoyance as well. I am happy to announce that as of July 2021 I have been back on iPhone and I have been very happy with things. I am at the point in my life where I can appreciate Apples approach to things. Whether you pick up an iPhone X or and iPhone 13 the software will be familiar and easy to navigate. Plus the software for both devices will receive updates on the same day which is something that Android has never been able to master. iPhones also have a wider variety of accessories which is nice as well. It means you can customize cases and what not and find a variety of choices for your phone, which isn’t the case for some Android phone models. I like the idea of having a physical Apple store that I can go to when there is a problem. I haven’t had to go there for many problems over the years but every time I have had to go I have received wonderful service. As far as computers go? Well I have abandoned windows entirely. I don’t like how Microsoft has so much tracking software integrated into Windows. Also how they force Microsoft Edge browser on users that have picked a different browser as their default, feels gross and anticompetitive. Microsoft edge is a great browser it was wonderful at first. Microsoft has messed it up by adding a buy now pay later feature to the browser that no one asked for as well as forcing it upon users. So I have switched back to Mac. I use a MacBook and MacMini as my main computers with Firefox as my browser of choice due to it being cross compatibility with Linux which I will get into in a moment. I really enjoy my Apple M1 MacMini. Apple has really hit it out of the park with the M1 processor. It is nice to see that kind of compatriot in on the CPU and GPU side for computers from Apple. It will push the whole industry to innovate which benefits everyone. I still use some Microsoft products namely and mainly OneDrive. It is an adequate and affordable cloud storage solution. I also still use Microsoft Office. Also though I suspect I would be just fine using Apple iWork or even An open source alternative like Libre Office. Speaking of open source. I starting looking in Linux again in 2017. I had originally tried Linux in 2008 which was supposed to be the year of desktop Linux. I remember there was much talk about a user friendly version of Linux called “Ubuntu”. I tried it in 2008. I installed it on my Dell that I mention in my other blog posts. Ubuntu was ok for a hot minute then during the very first update something got stuck and broke. I was stuck and had no Linux knowledge on how to fix it. I really wasn’t interested in messing with it so I went back to Windows. Fast forward to 2017. I tried Linux again. I tried various distros on my laptop that I had at the time which I think was a Dell as well. About that same time in 2017 I caught the ThinkPad bug. I had been using a ThinkPad T460 for work and gradually came to love it so much I wanted to buy one of my own when I had to return the work ThinkPad. So I bought myself a T460s and upgraded the RAM and SSD. I put Windows on it because that is what I was used to but I eventually tried many different Linux distros on it. I distro hopped quite a bit. I also bought a few more ThinkPads. Classic models like the T420 and X220. They were fun to tinker with but I had way too many computers so I got rid of them and kept the T460s. I eventually gave the T460s to the wife and put Windows 10 back on it for her. It’s a great computer that will last her many years. During that time of distro hopping I gave Ubuntu another try. I really liked it. It was much better and I didn’t have any issues. I wanted to learn more about about it and Ubuntu has a large community so support is plentiful. But like I said I gave that computer to my wife because I was fully going back to the living embrace of Apple and the Apple Ecosystem. I have an iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad Pro, Apple TV, 2 HonePods, AirPods Pro, Beats Fit Pros, MacBook and a M1 MacMini. I love being back in the Apple Ecosystem. I have Apple Care on my devices and pay for Apple One. I just feel a little constrained and joyless using Mac OS. I hardware of the M1 Mac is great. I just don’t enjoy the software so much. I mean it’s functional and you can get things done on it. But I don’t feel like it has a soul. Which made me miss Linux. I love Linux. The commands in the terminal on Linux make sense to me in a way that they never would in windows. The terminal feels more powerful and freeing that it does on the Mac. I know you can do a bit on the Mac and add things like “Brew” to the terminal in Mac, but it all feels a bit clunky to me. I really like how these things work on Linux. I learned a lot about Linux and the command line during my distro hoping days and really learn about Linux. I had a good workflow on Linux and really loved using it. And the thing that surprised me the most was that I loved Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros the most. Ubuntu itself topped my list as my favorite distro. It worked for me and was much better than the Ubuntu I tried out way back in 2008. I found that while using Mac OS I really just missed Linux. I thought I would go back to Pop_OS!, which is a very nice Ubuntu based distro. But I knew in my heart that I preferred the look and feel of Ubuntu. The more the internet keeps posting articles about how no one should use Ubuntu, all that hate made me love it more. It may not be the best distro for everyone but it was the best distro for me. So I did what no M1 Mac owning Apple fan should do. I switched back to Linux. I went online and bought an i7 powered T460s that was a little nicer than the one I gave to my wife. The computer already had maxed out at 20gb of RAM so all I needed was to upgrade the 500gb ssd in it to a 2tb ssd and I would have the system of my dreams. I finished the hardware upgrades and put Ubuntu on it. I did a little light customization and installed some software on it. I put my personal data on it and voila I have an amazing Linux machine that I love to use. Of course I will still keep and use my Apple Mac Computers as my secondary devices. But my heart belongs to Linux.