Tech I use
Right now, as of 1Ā month, 2Ā weeks ago this is the main tech I use. The physical stuff I use can be found here.
Email, Docs, and Drive: Proton. I love Proton so much I pre-purchased 3yr of my subscription in support (which normally I would not recommend doing for services, but I trust and support them and want them to succeed. Plus, email is something I donāt want to have to worry about for years).
Photos: I use a mix of iCloud, Proton, and Ente. Iām trying to get off of iCloud and onto European servers as much as possible, so hoping to continue to wean off and migrate to Ente more. Would also love to save that $0.99/mo (although I doubt thatās actually feasible since iCloud is the only way to backup iMessage).
Writing: Ulysses. Ulysses is an excellent app that honestly isnāt worth $40/yr. So while I love it, I canāt recommend it.
Browser: Safari on my phone, Firefox on my laptop (usually).
Search: On desktop I use Brave Search when I can. I find it to be the best option out of a slew of bad options. On my phone (and when I want to use Safari on my laptop) I use DuckDuckGo. Itās also mostly fine. Iām at the point where I think both of these options are better than Google. I've tried Kagi, but it's just not worth $10/mo, the results are fine.
Notes: Apple notes. But never completely satisfied with it.
Music: Spotify. I tried Qobuz but it's just not ready for prime time.
Book tracking: Goodreads. Hate Amazon but itās still the best app for this. StoryGraph has some potential but isnāt there yet. Micro.blog actually has a feature for tracking books too, but I havenāt decided if itās for me.
Health tracking: Apple Health and Strava.
Workout apps: I bounce between MacroFactor and Hevy.
Budgeting: I use a spreadsheet hosted on Proton.
News aggregation: Apple News. Itās meh.
RSS: never found an app Iāve liked for this! I stick with trusty newsletters sent to my inbox. But I do love Molly Whiteās āCurate your own newspaperā idea. I am intrigued by Current Reader, but do not use it right now.
Hosting: This site uses Bear. Bear is delightful and long-term I'll probably switch to it for all my blogs.
I use Magicpages for my Ghost site. I love it. But itās probably overkill, and I doubt I'll continue after this year. Ghost is so powerful as a distribution tool, but since my goal isn't really writing for distribution, I'm unsure that really matters.
I also have a site on Micro.blog. I like micro.blog but Iām not exactly sure what Iām trying to get out of it. Will probably cancel soon.
Obviously I'm paying way too much for hosting and need to simplify this.
Domains: Cloudflare. I have qualms about them being a US company and being cozy with Trumpās administration. But theyāre the best in the business and are dirt cheap. I used to use Spaceship, which is owned by Namecheap and was... fine? I didn't like the interface and have heard that the company can be kinda scummy.