Things I want a computer company to be
- Hardware manufacturer
- Operating system vendor
- Model for how to build the best software for their platform
- Good corporate citizen
- Inspiration
Things I don’t want a computer company to be
- Music store
- Music streaming service
- Television studio
- Movie studio
- News aggregator
- Fitness studio
- Advertisement company
- Bank
- Credit card company
- Bookstore
- Subscription podcast service
- Messaging platform
- Video game distributor
- Cloud storage service
- Online meetings host
- Email service
- Health platform
- Internet proxy
- Software gatekeeper
- Arbiter of other company’s business models
- The entire amount of commerce
- Monopoly
- The Police
Source: A Computer Company | tyler.io
I self-hosted my “cloud” applications on my home network for years and years. It was a LOT of work. I finally gave up and gave my digital life to Google. Then I recanted Google, and gave it all to Apple, and then doubled down. When I look at the list like this, I get really unnerved about how much of my life would be lost if my Apple account got blocked, deleted, or stolen. My fallback position is that I ran Linux on the desktop for 19 years, and it works even better for the kind of work I do than macOS. I could switch back, and leave a lot of this list behind.
This is half the reason I haven’t given up on 1Password, and let Apple’s keychain have all my passwords. At least, if I lose my Apple account, I would still have my credentials to get into everything else.
I’ve been using my Apple email for my account name on web sites for several years now. I should probably go back to using my actual address, which I can forward however I like…