I received my first MacBook Pro in compensation for what would have been a pay raise. I was working for a Doctor my mom had worked for since I was in second grade, and he made the offer to purchase the laptop for me a hold back my raise until it was paid off. Hell yeah!

I loved that thing. I don’t exactly remember, but I think it was a first generation pro; right after the white plastic Macbooks. It was heavy (at the time it felt fine, but thinking back that thing was a tank) and I used it for everything. I’ve had several MBPs throughout the years in one way or another, and they all performed as expected. You know when they start to get old they will noticably drag, but I would always tell myself that was just how computers were. Even PCs suffer from that if they are used like I use computers.

That was never it for me really, Apple was just confortable after a while. I’ve had iPhones almost exclusively since the 3, and basically my whole life is on Apple’s servers. I never really bought into the whole watch phenomenon, but other than that I’m Apple all the way.

Until they announced they are scanning everyone’s photo libraries for things they deem reprehensible. Not just that, it’s that they have been doing this for some time. Now I enjoy a good pedo beating like everyone else, but this shit crosses the line. I have an autistic son and I have pictures of him during a meltdown (they are funny to those who live this life because they happen pretty regularly, and 2 minutes later he goes back to doing whatever like nothing at all happened). What’s to say that algorithm doesn’t flag me for one of those? Or for a picture of my son and my daughter playing? Not this time, bro.

I recently sold my MBP in favor of one of the new Mac Mini’s with that new processor. It’s nice and all, but I’ve found that people are actively developing Ubuntu for it. It’s not QUITE there yet as far as compatibility, but it’s getting their quickly. I’ve also purchased a Google Pixel 2 XL and installed CalyxOS on it. Calyx claims to be a more privacy-focused and de-Googles fork of Android. I’m still playing around with this, but so far it looks promising.

So that’s it. Wipe the Mini and install Linux, ditch the iPhone in favor of an open source operating system phone. I’ve tried this before with little success with Grafana, maybe I can make it work this time. Calyx at least has push notifications; I used those extensively for alerts and what-not.