Whelp. Got my first case of ‘Rona.

Officially have 690 cataloged books in our private collection. Probably actually 700 since there are some self-published and old international oddities.

For a UI enthusiast and long-time Mac user such as myself, watching Mac OS gradually become a shell of its former self — more locked down, more simplified and iOS-ified — is a painful spectacle. Have I had any problem with my M2 Pro Mac mini running Ventura since I purchased it in June 2023? No. Not an issue, and not a crippling bug either. That’s great, don’t get me wrong. But also: am I happy every time I interact with this Mac OS? No. Not as happy as when I switch to another of my Macs running older Mac OS versions like High Sierra, Mojave, El Capitan, Snow Leopard, Tiger. I use this Mac mainly for work. But it feels just like when I used a Windows PC for work. I tolerate it, I can work with it; but the fun is elsewhere.

There’s an entire world of macOS users having an experience I cannot relate to one iota. Riccardo Mori (link to the post with the above quote), who is an excellent writer, is increasingly one of those people. His downward spiral on Apple and tech in general over the last few years has been kind of weird for me to watch. I know his anguish has discouraged his blogging, especially because he has gotten a lot of push back from folks (and I think he thinks they’ve got the wool over their eyes).

I think a lot of this has to do with aging. As we get older, some ideas become things we cannot let go of, whereas other ideas become less and less important. That’s not to say this is good or bad– I’m not saying someone like Riccardo isn’t keeping up with the times or any such nonsense. I’m saying that each of us, uniquely, has a set of ideas, principles, routines, and desires that become hardened while others wither away. Depending on the mix of things you care about, you can end up deeply satisfied or unsatisfied as the world continues on its own path.

I’m glad that so far, the things that have hardened for me have not run counter to the broader directions of tech– I’ve never felt more capable while spending less and needing less. I’d be pretty bummed out if it felt like the things I need to be able to do (and have fun doing) got worse.

It’s good to read things you can’t relate to directly. It’s good to read about critiques that ring completely false and counter to your experience. I get to try on ideas and consider their value and impact and decide for myself. I am shaped by the opinions I allow in, so I don’t mind reading the endless onslaught of things that sound ridiculous to me– like how Riccardo hates the notch on iPhones and MacBook Pros and still thinks every phone is too big and super hard to use. I can reconsider my experience. Is there something that I’ve been brushing off that I shouldn’t? Are there ways of doing things I have failed to consider that would make me happier or more productive?

Should I offer any of my energy to this?

As I get older, it’s that question that comes up most often– how much of my energy am I willing to expend on this area of my life? I am, at my heart, a satisficer, not a maximizer. I do my research, I think about what my goals are, I make my decisions, and provided they work well, I move on. I want the right home theater equipment, but once installed and working great, I’m content to leave it there for a long time (I don’t think I’ve made any upgrades since getting a 4K capable receiver 6 or 7 years ago, and my speakers haven’t changed in a decade). Once things are great, I let go, no longer offering them any more of my energy.

Great is great, and best is a waste of time.

And so often, I read long critiques about details and moving form great to best and think, “Not one of these things will materially impact me.”

I use Transmit from Panic as my main app for interacting with Amazon S3 buckets and SFTP servers. I use the command line for both of those services plenty as well, but sometimes it’s nice to just drag and drop and look at things visually.

Using S3 and SFTP is not a thing that everyone needs to do.

Transmit has another trick up its sleeve that I use all the time– Dropbox and Google Drive support.

The Dropbox app is terrible, and frankly, so are most cloud storage applications. What used to be “just” a folder on my Mac that I could trust to get synchronized to the cloud and all of my other devices became a resource hog and a UX nightmare. Frankly, I just don’t use “cloud storage as my file system” the way I think these things are intended. Instead, Dropbox and Google Drive are largely places where other people share files with me and vice versa. As it turns out, 99/100 times when I’m working in this setup, I don’t need constant two-way syncing. Instead, I just want to download something someone shared with me or upload something to share with someone else. So I added my Dropbox and Google Drive accounts to Transmit, dumped their apps, and happily upload and download files.

For example, my band records all of its rehearsals. I recently bought us a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd Gen – they’re being blown out now that the 4th gen has been released– and one of the other band members hooks that up to a laptop he brings. We record to Ableton directly, and after practice he cuts up the tracks and uploads them to folder in Google Drive shared with all of us.

Anyone who has used Google Drive knows what a mess it is to find anything and how bad the interface is for large files that it doesn’t know how to preview– like the wav files we record. It’s exceptionally easy to just open up the folder in Transmit, drag and drop, and have all the files locally.

At least it used to be exceptionally easy to do this. But Google have decided to put insane requirements on any developer who wants to support using its APIs, especially around Google Drive. This is messing with both Transmit and iAWriter.

Sigh. Google Drive continues to be one of the worst experiences on the web, and I guess that’s simply never going to change. Unfortunately, it seems my escape hatch has been closed.