Like a lot of folks, I imagine, I have several older computers around. I have an 8 year old Mac laptop. I remember when Mac users were charged for OS updates. Now they're free. I'm current, and have Outlinely, Notecase Pro, Emacs (open source), Folding Text (now free!) and Dynalist. Seven years ago I bought an Acer Windows 7 Home User laptop for $320. I still use it, but now it runs Linux Lite, and it flies. Emacs, Freeplane, Notecase Pro, and Dynalist are my outliners. Two years ago, I picked up a Chromebook for just a smidge over $200. Here I'm limited to Google Office, Dynalist, and some markdown editors that work with Dropbox and Drive. Oh, and Mindmup, the mindmapper in the cloud. (All of the Google stuff works anywhere, as does Dynalist.)

I also have access (through adjunct professor status) to Office 365. But I avoid it. Hate the UI. Always have. I kind of liked DOS, but the forced move to Windows made me check out the Mac, which was so clearly superior, I jumped ship. Later, I moved to Linux mostly to connect to the Internet, which leapfrogged Windows and the Mac OS both. Not surprising, since it was born on the internet.

On the one hand, I spend a kind of silly amount of time keeping them all updated. On the other hand, cutting Windows out of the mix has been particularly liberating. I hadn't realized what an intrusive OS it was, particularly in the time it asked of me, whether or not it was convenient. It was also intrusive in ways that Linux is not, but Google/Chrome OS certainly is--harvesting everything to sell you things.

My point, if I had one, is that my tool chest is probably narrowing. I'd like to try to remember where I wrote something. I like stretching the brain to understand the differences between OS philosophies. But mostly, I'm cheap, looking for powerful tools that I can get to, along with their data, anywhere.

So I'm curious. How many of you folks bounce around multiple computers, more than one OS, but find that it makes less of a difference than it used to?

I spend my work days in Windows 7 and the rest of my computing time on my MacBook or iOS devices. I use Dynalist, TickTick and -- to a lesser extent -- Evernote on all my devices. I used to rely heavily on TheBrain, but I let my subscription lapse. I have decided that OneNote can fill that void and I have an Office 365 subscription, so why not use it? Of course there are dozens of other apps, mostly in the Apple environment, that I use, primarily for writing or planning to write. I wish they were available on Windows (or that my office would switch to Macs). Tinderbox, Diarly, MacJournal and others. I also have dipped my toe (sometimes up to my ankle, sometimes up to my knee) in some cloud apps, notably Milanote, NoteJoy and Trello. I really like Milanote, but it is expensive and it doesn't integrate much with other apps. Trello seems to be stuck in its board format, which it has mastered, but that is a little too rigid for most of the work I do (although it is perfect for one specific thing, so as long as my subscription runs, I'll keep using it for that). NoteJoy is nice, but not enough of an improvement over other options to continue to pay for it.

So, I am trying to be cheaper and leaner and have made some progress in that regard, but CRIMP always makes that a little difficult.

Steve Z

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Trello
seems to be stuck in its board format, which it has mastered, but that
is a little too rigid for most of the work I do (although it is perfect
for one specific thing, so as long as my subscription runs, I'll keep
using it for that).

Lots of apps are moving into the kanban space by offering it as a view to their existing apps. Zenkit has had it for ages, Taskade just added it recently, and Todoist revealed a screenshot if it as well, due for fall release. Of course, many popular apps can be linked directly to Trello via Trello power-ups or Zapier integrations.

https://trello.com/power-ups
https://zapier.com/apps/trello/integrations

A friend uses a Gmail-to-Trello integration in order to send himself reminders to deal with specific issues (though I assume a more primitive option would be a unique flag within Gmail.) He says he can't live without it.

Most days I am on VPN using a Dell laptop (GFE from the agency I support) with Windows 10 and M365 (O365 for gov't) client and cloud apps. Next to it, on my MacBook running a Windows 10 VM for my corporate O365, so on that machine I am back and forth between macOS and Win10 apps. Then I have an iPad Pro with Pencil situated between the two laptops for my virtual notebook in Notability, for notetaking. And finally my iPhone for comms for the hours and hours of conference calls that anyone doing telework is tethered to.

With all that, I'm usually on Skype for meetings (screen sharing and text), Apple Messages for sidebar conversations with my team around the country -- frequently discussing what's going on in the meeting we're half listening to. If I'm not in meetings then I am in and out of Office documents. Very little time for anything else. Four computers (five if I count the Win10 VM separately) and four OS, a lot of money, and a lot of horsepower mainly just for chat. Lots of chat.

I get a lot of exercise though -- with my headsets on and walking around the house during these endless conf calls.

jaslar wrote:

So I'm curious. How many of you folks bounce around multiple computers,
more than one OS, but find that it makes less of a difference than it
used to?

Yup. Using a Win 7 laptop for work (forced to use MS Office by my workplace), Chromebooks for most other things (via web apps), iPod Touch for looking up things on the go, and an Android tablet for listening to radio or watching the news.

Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Gmail, Outlook, Chrome, WorkFlowy and Dynalist are the connecting tissue that allow me to do stuff cross-platform, no matter which device I pick up.

All Macs here, apart from an elderly Lenovo laptop that still runs Windows, but only gets taken out about once a year.

The couple of business apps I use in Windows I run in a virtual machine on a MacBook. I can thoroughly recommend the virtual machine approach to Windows (I think Paul does the same?); it's so much less hassle than using Windows as one's main operating system. Personally I use VirtualBox.

I also run Linux in a virtual machine (usually Xubuntu, which is very quick and elegant), but only to play with it. I like Linux, but can't easily integrate it into a corporate workflow, unfortunately. And yes, I still have to use Microsoft Office, although I try hard to subvert it by using LibreOffice as often as possible. I've experimented with several alternatives (LibreOffice, SoftMaker Office, Apple iWork) but at the end of the day, familiarity and compatibility win out, even though I hate Excel with a deep and bitter loathing, and despise Word.

Having previously considered Chromebooks, I've lost all faith in Google. So that's out of the equation.

The most notable observation about the transition to Macs? How much easier it's made my life as our in-house computer administrator. Users no longer complain about crashes, about how to do stuff, about updates, about weird unexplained "events"... they just get on and work - and appear to enjoy it. In the 30 years or so since I started managing our computer systems, that's a first. I'm not saying there are never any problems, but they only appear occasionally, and tend to disappear again. The one MacBook I've got regular problems with? It's used by our FD to do accounts on, so runs in Windows (under BootCamp or whatever it's called) most of the time...

The other thing: I haven't had to rebuild a Mac computer ever. I mean, ever. Windows machines I used to rebuild (= reinstall) every couple of years, just to make sure they kept running efficiently.

Biased, moi?

xxx Bill

If the leaks from inside MS are correct, Windows will change in a few years in big ways, and will be in trouble. Mac and chrome are tinkering in major ways too and will change greatly if other reports are true. Google is experimenting a lot with other stuff too but both companies are very secretive and tight ships in their r&d.

Linux wise, mint has been going through a crisis of confidence and drama recently. There are three classes of Linux, light medium and server heavy. Then different scales in each too. Depends on user. Few exciting flavors getting really hot. And a couple in development might be really big in the next year or two for very good reasons.

It's the big greedy tech giant corps vs open communities plus other big corps funding open source platforms to kill off MS/Apple/Google.

I've never succumbed to saying this before over the last twenty years, but finally I think the future of desktops is going to be Linux.

washere wrote:

but finally I think the future of desktops is going to be Linux.

Right after commercial fusion and the paperless office. ;0)

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

MS is not going to keep Windows as is if leaks are correct. Macs are retreating into graphic lands again as abandoned in favor of iPhones by the post Jobs powers that be. Google Chrome OS is making Orwell's Big Brother look like an ACLU activist.

Also many of us have gone paperless beyond our libraries, music & film collections etc etc. and into a digital Minimalist lifestyle. It's already happened for many.

Several startups funded in the valley are doing well in renting everything one can imagine under the sun for whatever duration as many professionals, many of whom are multi millionaires, are nomads and/or ultralight by choice.

I remember when people laughed at CD ROMs, multimedia, laptops, the new http protocol, mp3 players, broadband, streaming video, digital startups, AI, smart phones, tablets, e-commerce, online shopping etc etc.

They're not laughing now, their leftovers reminiscent of natural history museum specimens. I never thought I'd say it but Linux will be king, there is a tectonic shift starting. I've never predicted wrongly so far, maybe this will be the first, but I don't think so.

This guy was into his Zen minimalism almost fifty years ago which reshaped the modern world's look, many cutting edge Digi innovators are following suit:

https://www.cultofmac.com/125861/steve-jobss-quest-for-perfection-could-make-even-buying-a-sofa-into-a-decade-long-ordeal/amp/

I'd argue that the general theme is convergence. People talk on this site, persuasively, about the many advantages of running Windows on a Mac. Now Windows 10 is launching a full Linux kernel (https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18534687/microsoft-windows-10-linux-kernel-feature Android and Linux apps are running on Chromebooks. Apple is working on single programs that will run on the Mac and the iPhone (https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-ipad-mac-apps-merging-apple-sdk-will-create-ios-apps-that-work-on-mac/

That means convenience, and the software I use is clearly getting cheaper all around. (It's true that subscriptions may wind up costing more than a one time software purchase--but if it means the product improves and the company stays in business, that's a good thing.) Beyond convergence, convenience, and cost, however, is the fact that the user has become both the product and the commodity. *Privacy* is the challenge now. I need to get smarter about local encrypted storage and ssh connections, I suspect. I wouldn't want my funny quotes and dad joke files to fall into the wrong hands.

I have no doubt, as @washere argues, that Linux will continue to make inroads. I'm just not sure in what domains "Linux will be king". Certainly Linux penetration is growing with AWS and others delivering cloud services, as well as in government clouds (especially mission-critical applications), and corporate clouds. It's hard to get good comprehensive numbers for penetration across all environments. On the consumer side -- for predicting what Joe- and Jane-on-the-street will buy -- I agree there will be significant convergence, but I'm fuzzy on the future dynamics that will drive adoption one way or the other.

The future will have a lot to do with how the tech industry addresses privacy, identity protection, revenue streams, etc.

It's a gradual shift.

Firstly as pointed out linux is not one but many. The top ones are getting better, gradually in stages. Some interesting ones are in the lab, with a lot of funding and will come out in the next year or two.

Plus More serious open source apps available for all users. Also many distros have step by step under the bonnet upgrades, not complete reinstall of upgrades. Stateless: you can upgrade easily or move the whole thing to another (higher spec) machine etc etc. Even with user configs. etc etc They add up.

Another factor is the big tech Giants are messing up. Microsoft wants to change Windows. Google is getting more and more intrusive and a mega big brother. Apple has taken off it's eye off the computer to focus on other devices, tv, wearables etc etc, they're even secretly working on an electric car they've spent billions on.

Also other big corporations are funding many Linux distros to fight back MS Apple and Google. Those distros unlike the top three are open source. Add that to the fact that these lesser corps are hardware manufacturers supporting their drivers, it's already getting better to run things smooth. In time it will be better than even MS drivers because unlike MS these are hardware manufacturer corps. Not yet, but a few years time.

Privacy: it's not just the big the tech Giants in OS. Most online apps have access to one's data and you can say they're not going to delete it once they move to their next scheme. Where will it end up? No one knows now.

Spam: much of online discussion areas have turned into spam for subscription based apps. If you point out something, specially with respect to security, or consumer rights one gets attacked by the spammer and organized trols. This is on all social media and had spread to forums too. So many don't have time to comment on spam and get attacked by the spammer & gang. Of course one finds out elsewhere the spammer confesses secretly he doesn't subscribe to 99% of what they advertise as "reputable online influencers" which is a very lucrative source of revenue these days online.

Ads and evermore spam is one thing, but where the data goes? What else is installed to run 24/7 on systems by them? As license checker processes or just plain spyware by these spammed apps? A lot of commercial companies and users need to investigate to keep clients and prevent future legal and other headaches. Linux has advantages as it gives back more control to the OS and the admin and helps monitoring with intrusive apps running constantly in the background and other security or data abuse issues. This is why many love it vs MS or Google.

There is no single distro now that can turn the masses away from Windows onto Linux, but in two years there will be. Again, it's a gradual shift in favor of open source and Linux, accelerated by greed on the other side at all levels. It'll take time but enough people have had enough and it's growing louder and the threshold and the singularity topping point will be reached.

The strategic butterfly has flapped her wings and the massive consequences are in motion.

Phone swipe typo: singularity tipping point

How does IOT play into that future, @washere?

It'll be important. My personal prediction is the key will be ways to monetize the little networks, ie iot swarms, initially at homes. Whoever figures that out will be king of hardware protocols for two decades, including houseware stuff and then data which is worth a lot more. Then street, local and City scales of that too. If I had to say, the Google's ai mellow guy is not as good as bezos' guy who is a beast and Amazon will win that.

It's not just iot. There's a lot more serious levels ahead. Let's just say I know a thing or two or more about ai. current talk of iot or ai will seem like Flintstones in fifty years NVM a hundred. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Then there's even more important strategic plateaus to emerge as Deleuze would say. It depends, will USA remain hegemonic in hard and soft power or will it be China? No one knows now for sure but that hegemony will determine the shape of things to come as previous elite's ideologues used to say. Let's just say if it's China, things are not going to be pretty. See yesterday's article in WaPo about how things change fast nowadays. How can we predict thirty years ahead or fifty or a hundred.

Then there wil be even more important factors shaping this century beyond global strategies but those are beyond this Forum's specialty really.

As far as iot which is one of many shells to come for ai in general: There are different fields one can discuss these devices. To make fortunes from as in valley ventures? Mass userbase impact? Cultural? Science, technical & engineering papers? Philosophical? etc. All are different topics.

In terms of infrastructure whoever develops the best protocols for packet sharing and gives extra free service to these intranet swarms will make a fortune, but only for a decade or two. Of course all the big powers, state or corps, want a backdoor, which at that level is really undectable even before ai. Which is what the Huawei news is all about.

Huawei is a state owned military Intel corp in disguise as a private company. Yesterday Spain said yes to 5g infrastructure by Huawei. Foot in the door in the Western grid, EU, for China. Either enough big money changed hands and bought out, like Italy recently, and/or not happy why USA not telling them details of the Huawei backdoor. 5g is speed, after that it'll be control via locations (home/business/buildings/ngo) smart intranet protocols, iot etc. Then after that semi-ai. Full ai, no one's got yet, even in secret.

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/masks-cash-and-apps-how-hong-kongs-protesters-find-ways-to-outwit-the-surveillance-state/2019/06/15/8229169c-8ea0-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html

MadaboutDana wrote:

Having previously considered Chromebooks, I've lost all faith in Google.
So that's out of the equation.

Why? What happened?

There have been a couple of references to the intrusiveness of Google by a couple of posters in this thread, and I'm just wondering if there have been some new revelations about Google and privacy that I missed.

Just wanted to comment. This a brilliant exercise regimen!

Paul Korm wrote:

I get a lot of exercise though -- with my headsets on and walking around
the house during these endless conf calls.

Dr. Andus, is Dynalist replacing Workflowy for you?

Dr Andus wrote:

Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Gmail, Outlook, Chrome,
WorkFlowy and Dynalist are the connecting tissue that allow me to do
stuff cross-platform, no matter which device I pick up.

Sorry for spraying chronological comments on this fascinating thread.

Dr Andus wrote:

There have been a couple of references to the intrusiveness of Google by
a couple of posters in this thread, and I'm just wondering if there have
been some new revelations about Google and privacy that I missed.

It happened in February (see https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/02/05/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking/ Google is also revising software to block Chrome ad-blocking extensions. (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker-features

The questions that worry me: (1) through the adoption of our cheap subscriptions and devices, do we hand over every click, driven ever more precisely to our deepest preferences (by a scattershot of images) ((linked to sales)). (((linked to us, specifically)))? Yes. We do. (2) who has access to that information? Answer to this one: anyone with a warrant. Any third party commercial partners, unknown to us. Hackers. (3) Who can get a warrant? Local practice varies. But an officer of the court does not necessarily mean judicial review. (4) Has this personally identifiable information been misused by law enforcement, or by those unnamed third parties? Oy. Maybe this is a new thread.

But those two news items seem to be driving the heightened concern about privacy in the Googleverse.

Although neither Google Calendar nor Google Keep show ads, I'm increasingly uncomfortable putting my schedule and other info there. Unfortunately, my task manager only does 2-way sync with Google Calendar, so even if I move my non-task appointments to Apple's calendar I'll have to subscribe to at least one GC calendar stream to integrate my dated tasks.

By the way, for those who take advantage of any of the many Chrome extensions that add utility to that browser, the Brave browser can use those extensions as well. It's a fork of Chromium, which Chrome is based on, but with all the tracking code Google uses ripped out. It comes with integrated ad-blocking and not only offers private browsing but also Tor browsing as well. I've found it to be just as fast if not faster than Chrome. Only downside is that cross-platform bookmark/site syncing is still in early beta, otherwise it's become my main browser.

Slightly OT: a book recently published in the UK, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: the Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard Business School, explores some of the concerns expressed above.

Interestingly, my experience as in-house computer administrator is almost the same, but with Windows 10 replacing all previous Windows versions :)

The one occasional issue we've had is with specific updates which turned out to be incompatible with older hardware--graphics adapters mostly. But this could be expected; due to our ideology, line of work (we are a sustainability/communication agency) and economic reasons, we stick to our PCs for the better part of a decade at least, and buy almost exclusively refurbished machines. A side benefit of this approach is that we can afford redundant PCs, so when one doesn't work for whatever reason, we can replace it immediately and deal with the problem itself later.


MadaboutDana wrote:

The most notable observation about the transition to Macs? How much
easier it's made my life as our in-house computer administrator. Users
no longer complain about crashes, about how to do stuff, about updates,
about weird unexplained "events"... they just get on and work - and
appear to enjoy it. In the 30 years or so since I started managing our
computer systems, that's a first. I'm not saying there are never any
problems, but they only appear occasionally, and tend to disappear
again.

Can you provide more details and/or some specific reference on this?


washere wrote:

MS is not going to keep Windows as is if leaks are correct.

washere wrote:

If the leaks from inside MS are correct, Windows will change in a few
years in big ways, and will be in trouble.

I agree that at the level of 'webware' you can run just about anything anywhere (though this may imply using specific browsers), as long as you have an internet connection.

But in the offline world this is not so evident. And we often discuss here niche products that are unlikely to become truly multiplatform. For one thing, their lone developers may not be able to afford this.

After many efforts to bring everything under a single OS --my preferred choice being Linux-- I've gone back to combing multiple machines, with different OSs, dedicated to specific purposes. Interestingly, I feel saner; e.g., I can switch off my comms tablet, and enjoy focused work on my main laptop. I'm even considering getting a hardware calculator...


jaslar wrote:

I'd argue that the general theme is convergence. People talk on this
site, persuasively, about the many advantages of running Windows on a
Mac. Now Windows 10 is launching a full Linux kernel
(https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18534687/microsoft-windows-10-linux-kernel-feature
Android and Linux apps are running on Chromebooks. Apple is working on
single programs that will run on the Mac and the iPhone
(https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-ipad-mac-apps-merging-apple-sdk-will-create-ios-apps-that-work-on-mac/

jaslar wrote:

Dr. Andus, is Dynalist replacing Workflowy for you?

The way things are going I'll probably be subscribing to both.

It's a bit of a luxury, as I could just switch everything over to Dynalist, but I do like to use WorkFlowy for most things (managing day-to-day tasks, an external brain, memory management), and keep Dynalist for my academic research only (basically a Zettelkasten), given its extra capabilities.