The new macOS (27) makes it much harder to turn off “Apple Intelligence”. I’ve been willing to string along with Apple so far, in spite of everything, and I will miss it. But forced feeding of slop is not something I’m going to pay for. So: what’s next?
What’s next is a LOT, which is why I’ve been reluctant to get started. But the very first thing I need is a list of things I’ll need so that I can have the same toolset for open-source devices that I have for Apple devices. I guess that’s what this is.
A. Hardware
Primus: a Linux destop.
I’ll just get a dumb Windows machine and then install Ubuntu, unless Asus or somebody ships a desktop with Ubuntu. This is a mere shopping problem.
Secundus: a Linux laptop or tablet.
See above.
Tertius: an open source phone.
There are Linux phones, I believe, but there are also other mobile OSs. See an example (Graphene) at the URL below. Again, largely a shopping problem. (Which is not nothing, but see further below.)
https://proton.me/blog/privacy-tools-experts-use
B. Software
Hardware is actually the easy part. I’ve become extremely attached to some software designed for Apple devices. Pages, for instance, for writing; Keynote for slideshows; Protagoras and Bellerophon for reading/interpreting Latin and Greek; PDF Expert for reading PDFs, especially in dead languages; etc.
LibreOffice is what I’ll end up using to replace my current word-processors and slideshow programs. I’m unenthused about that. But it’ll work. And I figure there are PDF readers for Linux, although I’ve never had occasion to look for them.
There simply may not be any equivalents for Protagoras and Bellerophon. But Heslin (designer of Diogenes) does provide Linux versions of his software, so maybe that’ll do. There are supposed to be ways you can set up your own instantiation of the Perseus Project, too. A summer project, maybe. (Or a retirement project, depending on how long this process takes.)
C. Cloud Storage
This, I think, is going to be the worst. The original slogan for iCloud was “It just works”, but at first it really didn’t. Now, damn it, it does, with nary a slip between devices. I’m going to have to find some substitute for it, or go back to the dark ages of the 20th century, when glitchy computers ate whole manuscripts without even belching.
The trouble is that most of the cloud services (Google, Dropbox, etc) are pure evil these days. Leaving iCloud for them would be leaping from the frying pan into the fire.
But: there may be options I don’t know about. Looking for those will be step one.
Also: there may be a way to go on using iCloud with Ubuntu devices, even though iCloud doesn’t officially support Linux distributions.
ANYWAY….
This is a long road and I’m just taking the first steps on it. By the time I finish, the A.I. bubble probably will have burst and the situation will be different when that’s happened. But this is a change worth making for several reasons, obligatory slop just being the most urgent or emergent of them.
