I’ve recently begun talking about Why I’m Considering Leaving Apple and so I’ve started looking at all of the various applications, helpers, tools, etc… that I use across my laptop, iPad, and iPhone to start figuring out what I’ll still have access to and what I won’t.
In news that will shock no one, most of the tools I use are not cross platform
Browsers
First up, I needed to take a look at my browser usage. As someone who has spoken at length about how I have yet to find a browser that fits all of my needs, it’s no surprise that I currently sit across various versions of Arc, Vivaldi, Firefox, Firefox Nightly, Brave, and Safari. I’m also looking at this new Zen Browser which feels like a cool cross between Arc and Firefox but I haven’t started using it mostly because of the lack of iOS support at the moment. The tools I tend to pick are ones that I can use across all of my devices, but I’m finding that this is going to be MUCH harder in a split ecosystem.
Immediately, I have to drop Arc and Safari because while Arc does support Mac and Windows, it doesn’t support Linux and Safari clearly only supports Mac. So I’m currently primarily invested in using Vivaldi for all of my work stuff and Brave for all of my personal stuff. I have a love/hate relationship with Brave so I’m hoping that Firefox ends up getting tab grouping at some point in the near future because that, when combined with the vertical tabs that are now in Nightly, might be enough to get me back on Firefox full time. Zen Browser might be able to fill that void, but losing tab sync would be a detriment that I’m not convinced I can live without. But, to be fair, I also said that about Safari’s tab groups and look at me over here surviving 🤷🏼♂️
This is where I’m seeing the most fractured setup at the moment. I was using Spark Mail for quite some time and it had a lot of features that I really loved about it but a ton of things that I didn’t and so I was already actively planning to move off of it, now I have to because it doesn’t support Linux. I’ve recently switched to Thunderbird which, out of the gate, kind of sucked for my needs until I came across two extensions that were game changers for me. Quick Folder Move and Dark Shadows XT. I prefer to use my keyboard for filing messages so Quick Folder Move was a must. There are things I would like to see improved, and given that the extension is all in Javascript, while not my primary language, I’m considering forking it and working on some of the things I’d like to see come to the extension. Dark Shadows XT took Thunderbird’s built by a backend engineer look and gave it some nice polish overall and made it feel more native mac like. I don’t necessarily love the color scheme specifically so I may end up digging around for a better one, but it’s leagues better than the default look and feel.
The biggest problem I have with Thunderbird is the lack of iOS application. They have mentioned that iOS support is coming but it definitely has been slow on the update side of things and it sounds like they are focusing on Android first so it realistically could be years before we see anything release. So for now, I’ve switched my phone from Spark to the default mail client which is… fine I guess. I’m definitely open to suggestions for better options here.
What’s Next?
This is just the tip of the iceberg for me as I still need to go through my work tools like IDEs, specific programs we use at work, but then a bunch of personal stuff like RSS readers, Mastodon clients, Music discovery and so much more. I’m open to suggestions for apps across the board so even if it’s in a category that’s not remotely close to these, I’d love to hear what you’ve been using lately, especially if you have done this transition from MacOS back to Linux.